The level of satisfaction of psychological needs as a function to predict the attitude towards extremism amongst university students

Abstract

The study aimed to investigate the level of psychological needs satisfaction and the students’ attitudes towards extremism at the faculty of the college of education in Kuwait University. Further aim was to discover the possibility to predict students’ attitudes towards religious, political and social extremism based on their level of satisfaction of psychological needs. In order to achieve the goals of the study, two scales were used, attitudes towards extremism scale and psychological needs scale, on a sample of 897 male and female students of Kuwait University, who were chosen randomly. A variety of statistical methods were used in order to obtain study findings. The results of the study indicated a statistically significant relationship between students’ attitudes towards extremism and students’ gender, in favour of male students. The study also showed that students’ attitudes towards extremism can be predicted by knowing the level of psychological needs satisfaction.

Keywords: Attitudes, psychological needs, extremism;