The Political Action Continuum: Predictor Archetypes from Civic Engagement to Political Violence

This study examines willingness to engage in nine political actions ranging from information sharing to killing across 14 politically salient causes, using a nationally representative survey of 34,300 U.S. adults. Weighted OLS and difference-score escalation models identify four predictor archetypes across a four-tier continuum (civic, protest, illegal, violent). An escalation profile emerges for military service, whose positive association grows monotonically across tiers and sharpens under straight-lining corrections; gun ownership, by contrast, shows uniformly positive but flat associations. Attenuators, most strikingly female sex, show deepening negative associations. Threshold reversers (economic grievance, abortion attitudes, conservative ideology) show their strongest associations at the protest tier as positive for grievance and pro-choice orientation, negative for conservatism, but are null or reversed at the illegal and violence tiers. Civic mobilizers (online and verbal news exposure, education) are positively associated with conventional participation and negatively associated with illegal and violent endorsement. The characteristics most strongly associated with protest endorsement are associated with comparatively lower endorsement of illegal action. These patterns align with general strain theory’ distinction between legitimate and illegitimate nonnormative coping, social learning theory’ focus on institutional socialization, and radicalization research emphasizing situational drivers of advanced escalation.