BASQUE ATTITUDE TOWARDS POLITICAL VIOLENCE - ITS CORRELATION WITH PERSONALITY-VARIABLES, OTHER SOCIOPOLITICAL ATTITUDES, AND POLITICAL-PARTY VOTE

The Basque are a strongly nationalistic European people in northern Sp ain and southern France with an ancient ethnic tradition and a languag e unrelated to any other known. Their recent history has been overshad owed by a terrorist organization perpetrating political violence withi n the boundaries of the Basque Country and often beyond its borders wi thin the Spanish state. Research on the Basque, with an emphasis on th e comparison of psychological characteristics (studied by the use of a n instrument developed for that purpose by the author or this article and another colleague, Jesus Guerra, of the University of the Basque C ountry), has provided an opportunity to review attitudes towards viole nce within the general population, analyze different groups constitute d according to differences in attitude as well as political party vote , and to compare them with regards to differences in personality. The distribution of these attitudes within the sample population, as well as some hypotheses as to their origins, are presented, discussing thei r possible relationship to social and psychological variables at work within Basque society. Psychopathological indicators permit an estimat ion of the degree of abnormality associated with the attitude towards political violence. (C) 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.