# Language Predicts Identity Fusion Across Cultures and Reveals Divergent Pathways to Violence

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08252 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.08252/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [MPNet: Masked and Permuted Pre-training for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.09297/) (2020)
- [Smarter, Better, Faster, Longer: A Modern Bidirectional Encoder for Fast, Memory Efficient, and Long Context Finetuning and Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13663/) (2024)
- [GigaSpeech: An Evolving, Multi-domain ASR Corpus with 10,000 Hours of Transcribed Audio](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.06909/) (2021)
- [Understanding the (In)Effectiveness of Content Moderation: A Case Study of Facebook in the Context of the U.S. Capitol Riot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02737/) (2023)
- [Is radicalization reinforced by social media censorship?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12842/) (2021)
- [Cognitive Linguistic Identity Fusion Score (CLIFS): A Scalable Cognition-Informed Approach to Quantifying Identity Fusion from Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16813/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In light of increasing polarization and political violence, understanding the psychological roots of extremism is increasingly important. Prior research shows that identity fusion predicts willingness to engage in extreme acts. We evaluate the Cognitive Linguistic Identity Fusion Score, a method that uses cognitive linguistic patterns, LLMs, and implicit metaphor to measure fusion from language. Across datasets from the United Kingdom and Singapore, this approach outperforms existing methods in predicting validated fusion scores. Applied to extremist manifestos, two distinct high-fusion pathways to violence emerge: ideologues tend to frame themselves in terms of group, forming kinship bonds; whereas grievance-driven individuals frame the group in terms of their personal identity. These results refine theories of identity fusion and provide a scalable tool aiding fusion research and extremism detection.