Far out: How to achieve extreme results without really trying

Extremism – political or otherwise – presupposes the presence of extreme, unusual, unexpected, oroutlying numerical values on some scale, and likewise, extreme judgments about such values.Political extremism is the paradigmatic domain in which pertinent psychological dynamics play out.Extremism is commonly considered undesirable, and to explain it, it is routine to invoke similarlyundesirable psychological constructs, as amply demonstrated in many chapters in this volume. Inthis chapter, we show that fundamental perceptual, statistical, and behavioral mechanisms canproduce extreme results no one foresaw, intended, or desired. We further show that extreme resultscan occur without the contribution of comparative perceptual or judgmental processes.