Ann-Cathrin Coenen

• Kunst, Jonas R.; Besta, Tomasz; Jaśkiewicz, Michał; Gajda, Anna Natalia; Sanden, Markus & Flatebø, Mina Marie [Show all 113 contributors for this article] (2026). The psychology of offensive and defensive intergroup violence: Preregistered insights from 58 countries. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). ISSN 0027-8424. 123(13). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2535665123. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Evolutionary theory and historical evidence suggest humans possess distinct psychological tendencies for defensive and offensive violence, which have insufficiently been considered in research. In a large-scale preregistered study across 58 countries ( N = 18,128), we demonstrate that violent extremist intentions manifest along two distinct psychological phenomena: defensive extremism, motivated by protecting one’s group from (perceived) threats, and offensive extremism, driven by establishing group dominance. We show that these dimensions a) can be reliably differentiated across diverse cultural contexts, b) are distinctively associated with psychological dispositions, and c) systematically differentiate countries varying in macrolevel sociopolitical functioning and violence. Across nations, a two-factorial structure was observed that was invariant at the scalar level. Defensive extremist intentions were consistently higher than offensive extremism in 56 out of 58 countries, suggesting greater moral acceptance of protective violence. While psychopathy was positively related to both types of violent extremist intentions, those high in Machiavellianism and narcissism demonstrated particularly higher levels of defensive extremist intentions. By contrast, those scoring high on religious fundamentalism and social dominance orientation demonstrated particularly higher levels of offensive extremist intentions. Unexpectedly, liberal political group identification was associated with higher offensive but lower defensive extremist intentions. Crucially, offensive (but not defensive) intentions were associated with macrolevel societal dysfunction, including political terror and internal conflict. These findings establish that defensive and offensive violent extremist intentions represent two conceptually different forms of extremism across a large and diverse range of countries, with consequences for research and practice.

• Grzymala-Moszczynska, Joanna; Coenen, Ann-Cathrin; Gore-Gorszewska, Gabriela; Kunst, Jonas R.; Kałwak, Weronika & Jasko, Katarzyna (2025). “The whole thing is a juggling act”: Qualitative exploration of goal systems among activists and nonactivists. The Journal of Social and Political Psychology. 13(2), p. 292–310. doi: 10.5964/jspp.15491. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Drawing on goal systems theory (Kruglanski et al., 2002), this preregistered study explored the relationships between political and non-political goals among individuals with varying levels of political engagement. We conducted 40 semi-structured qualitative interviews with activists, non-activists, and former activists from Poland and Norway. We identify three recurrent relationships between political and other life goals, such as work, relationships, health, and basic psychological needs: (1) suppression, where non-political goals eclipse activism or vice-versa; (2) conflict, experienced as chronic trade-offs that often precipitate burnout; and (3) facilitation, whereby non-political goals enable sustained engagement. These relationships manifest as four distinct goal structures. Activists typically displayed either a “juggling” structure that continuously balances multiple commitments, or a “political-dominant” structure in which the cause overrides alternative goals. Non-activists most often subordinated political aims, whereas former activists described a fluctuating “all-or-nothing” structure—initial single-minded commitment followed by strategic withdrawal when costs outweighed perceived impact. Cross-nationally, Polish participants reported more multi-issue activism and acute work–activism conflicts than Norwegians, potentially reflecting longer working hours and political dissatisfaction. Our findings corroborate goal systems theory by showing how dynamic configurations of goal relations underpin trajectories of engagement, disengagement and re-engagement.

• Coenen, Ann-Cathrin; Feist, Felix J.; Imhoff, Roland; Obaidi, Milan & Kunst, Jonas R. (2025). The psychology of Querfront tactics: How protesters perceive and navigate conflicting ideologies to mobilise collectively. British Journal of Social Psychology. ISSN 0144-6665. 64(4). doi: 10.1111/bjso.70015. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Social scientists have developed impactful frameworks to understand who unites in protest. Yet, when exceptional circumstances arise, people are sometimes astounded by the convergence of disparate groups protesting together for an apparently unifying cause. One recent example is the COVID‐19 pandemic. A new movement protesting the containment measures rapidly evolved, gaining momentum only weeks after the measures' implementation. Strikingly, the movement included participants from, among others, the political far left and right—individuals who had protested each other only weeks earlier and would do so again after the pandemic was declared over. This context enabled a real‐life investigation of how people navigated conflicting ideologies to mobilise collectively. Drawing on 11 naturalistic protest observations and template analysis of 30 interviews with 31 protesters, we find that most participants indeed experienced the movement as ideologically diverse. At the same time, protesters used three strategies to navigate ideological conflict: (1) highlighting superordinate identities and ally utility (i.e., usefulness in advancing shared goals); (2) defending allies through in−/out‐group biases; and (3) embracing diversity. Our analysis demonstrates the combined explanatory power of social identity, social categorisation, and coalitional psychology frameworks in understanding emerging Querfront alliances, showing how protesters moved from identity construction to coalition calculus.

• Coenen, Ann-Cathrin; Juttemeier, Marilena; Obaidi, Milan; Power, Seamus A. & Kunst, Jonas R. (2024). The role of temporal analogies in collective movements. European Journal of Social Psychology. ISSN 0046-2772. 54(3), p. 670–687. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.3037. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Although the importance of temporal perspectives for understanding collective movements has been theoretically emphasised, they are rarely considered in research. Focusing on the mass protests against COVID-19 policies in Germany, we investigated how protesters make use of temporal references in their protest narratives. Results from 11 multi-site protest observations and 31 interviews showed that participants (a) drew historical perpetrator and victim analogies and imagined a dystopian future, bolstering perceptions of injustice, (b) drew on resistance narratives and imagined the ideal, utopian future society, increasing their perceived efficacy and (c) countered feelings of insignificance by identifying with past heroes. Protesters living in the East of Germany drew comparatively more resistance analogies than those living in the West, who often likened those complying with the COVID-19 policies to the perpetrators of the past national-socialist and communist dictatorships. The findings empirically underline the importance of integrating historical–cultural–future perspectives into models of collective action.

• Kunst, Jonas R.; Coenen, Ann-Cathrin; Gundersen, Aleksander Bjørge & Obaidi, Milan (2023). How are acculturation orientations associated among majority-group members? The moderating role of ideology and levels of identity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations. ISSN 0147-1767. 96. doi: 10.1016/j.ijintrel.2023.101857. Full text in Research Archive
• Coenen, Ann-Cathrin & Kunst, Jonas R. (2021). Ethnic diversity and extremist attitudes in soccer teams: A multi-level investigation. International Journal of Intercultural Relations. ISSN 0147-1767. 80, p. 285–306. doi: 10.1016/j.ijintrel.2020.07.003. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  It has been argued that sports contexts may be suitable venues for reducing intercultural hostility, including its more extreme forms, yet empirical evidence remains scarce. The present study investigated the main and interactive influence of two sets of factors on support for violent extremism: (a) ethnic diversity of teams, that is, the heterogeneity of the team members’ ethnic origins, and (b) team members’ intercultural perceptions, including perceived social capital, contact experiences and diversity ideologies within the team. Individual-level data from 257 players nested within 36 German soccer teams were combined with assessments of the ethnic diversity of each team based on a genealogical database. Multi-level analyses were conducted. Some evidence suggested that higher ethnic diversity within a team and frequent inter-ethnic contact between its players were associ ated with more extremism. However, cross-level moderation analyses showed that ethnic diversity was associated with less support for violent extremist groups when inter-ethnic contact quality was high. Perceptions of colorblind team ideologies that focus on minimiz ing/ignoring differences between groups were associated with lower threat perceptions and extremism. While social capital generally played little of a role, one social capital indicator, norms of behavior, was unexpectedly associated with higher threat perceptions. Overall, the present findings suggest that increasing ethnic diversity in sports teams may in itself not reduce extremist attitudes and sometimes may even backfire. Rather, how intercultural relations are managed within these contexts seems decisive. Prioritizing venues for posi tive contact experiences between soccer players of different backgrounds seems essential.

• Kunst, Jonas R.; Obaidi, Milan; Coenen, Ann-Cathrin; Vasseljen, Vilde Dyvik & Gill, Paul (2021). What Makes a Terrorist? Muslims’ and non-Muslims’ Lay Perceptions of Risk Factors and Their Consequences for Counter-terrorism Policy Support. Terrorism and Political Violence. ISSN 0954-6553. doi: 10.1080/09546553.2021.1967149. Full text in Research Archive

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