Objective
This article looks at whether political and self‐efficacy predict the justifiability of political violence and terrorism.
Methods
Utilizing the World Values Survey sample of 41,178 respondents from 31 countries, this article uses a mixed effect logistic regression with country‐level random intercepts to answer the research question and test the hypothesis.
Results
Self‐efficacy predicts less support for political violence or justifiability of terrorism, and less political efficacy predicts less support for terrorism while not influencing political violence in a significant manner. The interaction between self‐efficacy and economic insecurity was significant with high economic security and low self‐efficacy predicting more justifiability of terrorism.
Conclusions
Support is found for Saab et al. (2016) “gun and the olive branch” thesis. Specifically, being politically efficacious and finding conventional political activism efficacious does not reduce support for political violence. However, finding conventional activism efficacious makes one less likely to find terrorism justifiable. Support is also found for the prosocial effect of self‐efficacy (Rottweiler and Gill 2020).