Variable Effects of Terrorism: From the Lab to the Real World

For over 20 years, we have run a series of psychological experiments, examining how individuals react to simulated news reports of international conflict and terrorist attacks. Obviously, the laboratory is not the real world, nor are its participants real victims. At the same time, participant reactions reflect more general human tendencies. To begin, we shall briefly describe the nature of the experiments and the size of the sample, and then discuss what we found.

Our research program has consisted of a series of laboratory experiments focusing on the responses of young adults to simulated media reports on international conflicts and terrorism.

We administered questionnaires to samples of between 40 and 100 mostly undergraduate university students. One experiment used undergraduate and graduate students to rate a set of items and establish a scale of the degree to which the items reflected international conflict and cooperation. In other experiments, undergraduate participants were shown a priming vignette and/or a background scenario describing a situation of conflict or friendship between nations. Participants, who were residents of the United States, were then given a newspaper report of a military or terrorist attack on a nation allied with the United States. After that, they were asked how the United States should respond to that attack. Anticipating (even before 9/11) that repeated attacks would lead to escalated reactions, we next gave participants a second newspaper report describing another attack and again asked for their reactions. This procedure was iterated for a

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total of five or six successive rounds. Finally, participants were asked to respond to questions probing their personality attributes and demographic characteristics such as gender, religion, and ethnicity.

Our experiments make it clear that people react to terrorist attacks in diverse ways. There are, for example, variable emotional effects; individuals respond with different levels of fear and anger to terrorist attacks. Usually such attacks make individuals fearful. Real-world terrorist attacks certainly confirm this finding. After commercial aircraft were flown into the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center on 9/11, some people inside jumped from the flaming buildings while others were immobilized. Israelis, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Iraqis have all recently huddled in shelters to escape missiles overhead.

Fear and confusion are natural effects of terrorist attacks; but not always and not for everyone. Our research reveals that terrorist attacks generally produce anger. In the real world, too, we have seen that those attacked may undertake aggressive counter-measures. In one of the hijacked planes on 9/11, passengers rebelled and assaulted the terrorists, crashing the plane. Similarly, Londoners did not unravel in 2005 when terrorist bombs detonated in the Underground, nor did they passively give in during the Nazi bombings of the World War II blitz. More at a distance, but still connected through the media, some people are afraid for their own safety following terrorist attacks; but others are wildly angry, swear revenge, see an attack as a challenge, are determined to strengthen security so that it will never happen again, or vow to rebuild.

Attacks, over time, produce cumulative reinforcement and extinction effects. Experimental participants received reports of terrorist attacks both inside and outside the laboratory; and these combined to stimulate conflictual and emo-

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tional responses. Within the laboratory, when reports of terrorist attacks were repeated, they primed the pump of intense reaction. Fear and anger also increased dramatically after several attacks, whereas forgiveness declined. In addition, subjects were influenced by external context outside the laboratory. The real world events of 9/11 had strong effects on our participants. Their responses to simulated terrorist attacks were less combative before the attacks of 9/11, more forceful soon afterward, and less inclined to conflict again as time passed. In the absence of continuing external reinforcement, conflict tendencies inside the laboratory seemed to decline.

Attacks also had consequences that differed depending on their perceived agent or target. Reports of attacks by terrorists stimulated more escalation of conflict in responses than did reports of attacks by formal military forces. Perhaps counter-intuitively, terrorist strikes on military targets generally provoked more forceful subject responses than did attacks on cultural or educational targets. We explain these findings in terms of an image theory of international relations. According to this theory, individuals form general mental images of countries or groups as enemies or allies, and these images guide their decisions about how to respond to actions by those groups. An attack on a military site is more likely to be viewed in terms of an act of war. An attack on a cultural or educational target sends a less focused signal.

Our experiments further disclose personality, gender, and relationship effects. The escalation of conflictual responses to ongoing terrorist attacks was especially obvious in the responses of individuals who scored high on personality measures of dominance, as opposed to submission. Our experiments also confirm that gender matters. When men read reports of terrorist attacks, they generally wanted to strike back in kind. Women, on the other hand, tended to have less inclination to react with conflict. Furthermore, men tended

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to be angrier and women more fearful in response to terrorist attacks. There was, however, an exception to this rule.

Gender effects seem to vary with a perceived prior relationship. When terrorists were reported to come from enemy nations, where there was no prior positive bond, women reacted more harshly, at least after repeated attacks. When terrorists came from friendly countries, democracies for example, men tended to react more punitively to perceived betrayal after repeated attacks. Women tended to be more forgiving and respectful of established political relationships. As this interaction of gender and prior relationships suggests, the effect of gender is more complex than the common sense of folk wisdom would have it.

Gender, however, is overridden by personality. In our experiments, men tended to score higher on dominance and lower on submission measures than women. But men and women are not equally dominant or submissive. Many women are very dominant, and these women responded forcefully to terrorist attacks in the experiments. Similarly, there are many men who are quite submissive, and such men respond less forcefully to terrorism.

Our experimental findings are relevant for real world events. Obviously, there are different kinds of terrorist attacks with different cognitive and emotional meanings for the perpetrators and the victims. Individuals fit these attacks into their own personal, group, and national images and stories. Terrorism, by definition, is designed to produce terror, but it does not actually do so all the time, in all circumstances, for all individuals. Repeated terrorist attacks arouse dominant individuals to respond not with fear but with the sword. Those who would inspire terror, or even “shock and awe,” might consider the complex unanticipated consequences of their actions.

With all sympathies toward the real-world victims of

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terrorism, from a psychological perspective ongoing political events also represent a form of experiment. Past, present, and future attacks test the validity of laboratory findings in the real world. For example, the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai was not a simple event. It had complex effects on multiple actors. Political leaders and followers in varying national and local settings did not react uniformly with terror. Victims in the Mumbai Taj Mahal Hotel reacted very differently than did hotel owners in Karachi, officers in the Pentagon, or social scientists. Further, each actor’s reactions varied over time. They are not the same today as they were yesterday, or as they may be tomorrow.

Psychological experiments and real-world experiences inform each other and broaden our knowledge about the effects of terrorist attacks. In a different world, this is not knowledge that we should wish to have. In our times, however, it can be useful. As we learn more about the effects of terrorist attacks, we increase our abilities to manage their aftermath. We increase political leaders’ abilities to cope with the very complex web of terrorist effects on their populations and to connect with various types of citizens whom terrorism may affect very differently. Even more importantly, we are better able to shape long-term strategies for democratic responses to terrorism in the emerging, dangerous environment of the 21^st century.

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