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The Political Psychology of
Terrorism Fears
This page intentionally left blank
The Political
Psychology of
Terrorism Fears
Edited by
Samuel Justin Sinclair
and
Daniel Antonius
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide.
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other
countries.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Samuel Justin Sinclair:
This book is dedicated to my mentor and friend, Dr. Kimberly Bistis. You have taught
me a lot about being a better psychologist, thinker, and person.
Daniel Antonius:
To “farfar,” who at the young age of 94 continues to be inspirational in
everything I do.
This page intentionally left blank
CON T E N T S
Dedication v
Acknowledgments ix
Contributors xi
Introduction xv
Samuel Justin Sinclair and Daniel Antonius
PART ONE
1. Trust in the U.S. Government and Antiterrorism Policies After 9/11:
Are We All in This Together? 3
Virginia A. Chanley
2. Perceptions of Threat, Trust in Government, and Policy Support
for the War in Iraq 20
George Shambaugh
3. Negative Emotions and Political Engagement 51
Michael J. Stevens
4. Beyond the Water’s Edge: Threat, Partisanship, and Media 67
Shana Kushner Gadarian
5. The War/Crime Narrative and Fear Content in Leader Rhetoric About
Terrorism 85
Krista De Castella and Craig McGarty
6. Fear of Suicide Terrorism: Consequences for Individuals and Politics 107
C. Dominik Güss, Alexandra Foust, and Dietrich Dörner
7. Policy Preference in Response to Terrorism: The Role of Emotions,
Attributions, and Appraisals 125
Geoffrey Wetherell, Bradley M. Weisz, Ryan M. Stolier, Adam J. Beavers,
and Melody S. Sadler
PART TWO
8. The Legacy of Fear in Northern Ireland 139
Rachel Monaghan
9. A New Normal? Australian Responses to Terrorism and Their Impacts 156
Anne Aly
10. Psychological Determinants of the Threat of Terrorism and Preferred
Approaches to Counterterrorism: The Case of Poland 171
Katarzyna Jaśko, Małgorzata Kossowska, and Maciej Sekerdej
11. An Exposure Effect? Evidence from a Rigorous Study on the Psychopolitical
Outcomes of Terrorism 193
Daphna Canetti, Carmit Rapaport, Carly Wayne, Brian J. Hall, and Stevan E. Hobfoll
12. Political Psychology of the Death Terror 213
Abdolhossein Abdollahi
13. Risk Perception, Fear, and Its Consequences Following the 2004 Madrid and
2005 London Bombings 227
Marie-Helen Maras
14. Rallying Without Fear: Political Consequences of Terror in a High-Trust
Society 246
Dag Wollebæk, Kari Steen-Johnsen, Bernard Enjolras, and Guro Ødegård
PART THREE
15. The Politics of Terrorism Fears 267
Richard Jackson
16. Constructing Psychological Terror Post 9/11 283
David L. Altheide
17. Why Is It So Difficult to Evaluate the Political Impact of Terrorism? 299
Ami-Jacques Rapin
[viii] Contents
ACKNOW L E D G ME N T S
Bradley M. Weisz
Department of Psychology
San Diego State University
San Diego, California
C O N T R I B U TO R S [xiii]
This page intentionally left blank
IN TROD UC T IO N
The last decade has seen a dramatic shift in how governments across the globe
understand and prioritize issues of national security, with terrorism emerging as
one of the single most critical threats with which to contend. Since the attacks of
September 11, 2001, over a trillion dollars has been spent by the United States in
the “War on Terror” (Mueller & Stewart, 2011), and the sociopolitical landscape
has changed dramatically with two new wars in Afghanistan and Iraq also bearing
significantly on international resources. Some have argued that we have evolved
into a “securitized” culture constructed to combat these threats, while other priori-
ties such as education, poverty, social security, social programs designed to help the
disadvantaged, and maintaining our basic infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges, police
and fire, etc.) all have taken a backseat to the complex and ever-expanding national
security priorities that have ensued. These issues have been further complicated by
the evolving dynamic in the Middle East, with new worries about a nuclear arms
race and potential for these weapons to fall into the hands of terrorists.
In light of this change in zeitgeist, issues of terrorism and political violence have
become hotly debated topics in the political sphere around the globe. The events of
September 11, 2001 in particular have completely reshaped the landscape in which
we as citizens engage the political process. Policies about security and safety have
topped the agendas of government administrations over the last decade, particu-
larly within the United States. However, despite the fact that 9/11 occurred on U.S.
soil, one could easily argue that the fallout has been experienced internationally. For
example, some have argued that the 2004 Spanish General election was impacted
significantly by the terrorist attacks on Madrid in March, 2004. Others have sug-
gested that worries about terrorism have affected governmental decision-making
on issues such as whether and how to supply military assistance to the ongoing
NATO efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Fears of terrorism have continued over the last decade, and most recently have
become a central issue in the 2012 U.S. presidential debates, following on the
September 11 anniversary attacks on the U.S. embassy in Libya, which resulted in
the assassination of Ambassador Stevens. As recently as last year, terrorism alerts
were issued across Europe as evidence emerged that countries such as Germany
and France were specific targets. Following on this, cargo planes were intercepted
in the United States with packages containing bombs that were being sent to syna-
gogues in Chicago. Although we find ourselves a decade past 9/11, the reverbera-
tions of this event continue to be felt.
As a means of further unpacking the psychology of terrorism, we (the Editors)
recently completed a volume exploring the phenomenon of terrorism fears specifically,
seeking to root these dynamics within known theoretical and empirical frameworks
(Sinclair & Antonius, 2012). Our central thesis was that despite normalizing rates of
psychopathology within the United States and beyond, people continue to fear terror-
ism in meaningful ways. We further argued that existing frameworks for understand-
ing how people are affected psychologically by terrorism are inadequate, often relying
on specific clinical criteria for making a psychiatric diagnosis of some kind. In short,
we made the case that while many may not meet these specific clinical criteria, there
is evidence to suggest that people remain fearful about terrorism, and that fear varies
widely across time and context. These fears affect how people make decisions in their
lives, including where and what they do for work, as well as patterns of socializing and
traveling. These fears have also been shown more recently to impact how people make
decisions about political process, including the candidates they endorse for public
office and policies they support for legislation. For example, Toner and Elder (2001)
reported that in a December 2001 New York Times/CBS News poll, roughly two-thirds
of Americans surveyed after the 9/11 attacks said they were in favor of granting the
president additional powers to change the constitution as a means of keeping the
nation safe, and approximately the same number thought the government should be
allowed to monitor conversations between suspects and their lawyers. Roughly 80 per-
cent of those queried also supported the indefinite detention of terror suspects.
This pattern of data reflects the tendency of people to place more trust in their
governments to keep them safe from future violence following large-scale terror-
ist attacks, as has been noted elsewhere in the literature (Chanley, 2002; Chanley,
Rudolph, & Rahn 2000; Sinclair & LoCicero, 2010). For example, Chanley et al.
(2000) noted that trust in government had declined considerably prior to the 9/11
attacks, but that following the attacks trust in government “… rose to a level not
seen since the mid-1960s” (Chanley, 2002, p. 469). Sinclair and LoCicero (2010)
sought to empirically test this phenomenon more recently, and demonstrated that
fears of terrorism and the impact of changes in the governments’ color-coded alert
system were found to be significant predictors of trust in government for protection.
Attachment theory and evolutionary psychology were then used as frameworks for
understanding these effects, where people are driven to seek safety and security
from an authority figure when a significant threat is present.
Fears of terrorism following a terrorist attack have also been shown to affect
the economy, which itself is a prominent political issue. For example, in the
years following the 9/11 attacks the U.S. airline industry suffered billions of dol-
lars in losses, and were forced to lay off tens of thousands of employees. The U.S.
[xvi] Introduction
Congress was forced to pass a $15 billion bailout package for the industry. Two
airlines (US Airways and United) were subsequently forced to file for bankruptcy
in 2002 as a function of plummeting revenues and fewer people flying. The stock
markets have also been found to be sensitive to terrorism fears. For example, Lim
(2004) reported that immediately following the location of a bomb beneath the
train tracks in Paris in 2004, the Dow Jones Industrial average declined 80 points.
Granted, this event occurred after the Madrid bombings, which also likely played
a role in people’s fears, but it demonstrated the economic impact that terrorism
fears have as well.
As a means of further understanding how different types of emotional responses
to terrorism impact support for different governmental policies, Lerner and col-
leagues (2003) evaluated whether fear versus anger reactions had different effects
in terms of people’s perceptions of risk and policy preferences. As expected, Lerner
et al. (2003) reported that fear was associated with greater perceived risk than
anger, and was more predictive of precautionary, conciliatory measures aimed at
reducing external threat. They also noted that people exhibited greater optimism
in the context of increased anger, and greater pessimism in the context of fear. The
authors explain these findings in part by noting that anger, unlike fear, may lead
people to experience a greater sense of control over their environment, whereas fear
may lead people to experience a loss of control.
Some have suggested at various points over the last decade that fear has been
used as a political strategy to enlist support for both political candidates and spe-
cific governmental policies. For example, in 2009 Former Secretary of Homeland
Security, Tom Ridge, published a book in which he reported that he felt some pres-
sure to raise the U.S. terror alert level in the context of the 2004 Presidential elec-
tions, leading some to speculate that this was done for political purposes (Charles,
2009). Despite these claims, which have been made with increasing frequency in
more recent years, there has been very little systematic and scientific evaluation of
the impact of terrorism fears on political process. Instead, people have been left to
speculate as to who this benefits and how.
The purpose of this volume is to present an interdisciplinary and integrated
body of work, which explores how terrorism fears impact the political process in a
number of contexts. The volume contains multiple empirical studies examining how
emotions more globally, and fear specifically, are associated with political decision-
making and behavior. Further, it also contains a number of chapters presenting vari-
ous theoretical frameworks, such as probability neglect, terror management theory,
and other cognitive heuristics, which function as models for determining how and
why these dynamics manifest. Finally, given that this is an issue of international
significance, the current volume also contains a number of chapters examining how
fear and other emotions related to terrorism have impacted the political process in
nations around the globe, including: Northern Ireland, the Israeli-Palestinian con-
text, Poland, Iran, Australia, Norway, England, and Spain. In doing so, we hope to
demonstrate the complexity of these issues across cultures and time, and provide
I N T R O D U CT I O N [xvii]
some insight into how terrorism fears vary markedly as a function of context and
exert differing levels of influence on the political dynamic.
In our earlier work, we sought to present a new framework for understanding the
psychological impact of terrorism from a behavioral sciences perspective (Sinclair
& Antonius, 2012). In this former volume, we presented preliminary data in sup-
port of the presence of fear as separate from discrete forms of psychopathology, and
began to discuss the impact of these fears on real-world functioning. The primary
aim of the current volume is to extend this work by presenting new research investi-
gating how and why terrorism, and fears about terrorism specifically, affect political
decision-making and engagement in the political process. The implications of these
findings are then presented.
[xviii] Introduction
for government retaliation and a more general “hostile-world effect.” Dr. Stevens
presents a body of research showing how these reactions may be moderated by
emotional response, where fear and anxiety are associated with more avoidant
behavior, less support for military intervention, and greater preference for isola-
tionist policies—all as a means of mitigating threat. Conversely, emotions such as
anger are associated with more aggressive and retaliatory policies, and higher level
of engagement and approach behavior. Dr. Stevens then discusses certain heuristics
which describe how emotions may impact the processing of information, and lead
to overestimating versus underestimating threat information.
Following earlier chapters focused on issues of governmental trust, Dr. Gadarian
presents her own experimental research demonstrating the effect of partisanship
on threat perception in a politicized context in chapter 4. Specifically, her findings
suggest that following 9/11, Democrats who perceive threat information as being
manipulated in some way (and therefore less trustworthy) are less likely to accept
the information and more prone to resist it. That is, as issues related to terrorism
are perceived as being politicized in some way, it is more likely to be rejected by
Democrats, suggesting that political ideology also plays a meaningful role in risk
perception and subsequent emotional response.
Because the media and political elites alike have the ability to control the flow of
threat information, which raises questions about the potential for this information
to be used for political purposes, it is also important to understand how political
leaders communicate with the public they are elected to represent. In chapter 5,
De Castella and McGarty present a very interesting narrative analysis of various
speeches made by George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Osama bin Laden. Based on
these analyses, they note that fear content in these communications vary markedly
across time, context, and speaker—all of which has implications for how the pub-
lic would be expected to support different policies (e.g., going to war with Iraq).
They conclude their chapter with a call for both politicians and the public alike to
consider the manner in which these types of narratives perpetuate certain political
dynamics, and to move towards a more rational and evenly considered narrative
approach as a means of reducing fear and worry, and moving away from the War/
Crime discourse of terrorism.
In chapter 6, Güss, Foust, and Dörner seek to present a more integrated approach
to understanding the psychological mechanisms (e.g., motivational, emotional, cog-
nitive) underlying how people respond to acts of suicide terrorism, and how this in
turn impacts political attitudes both at the level of the general population and polit-
ical leader. These dynamics are considered across various contexts, including in the
aftermath of terrorist attacks and in contexts where terrorism is more common. The
fear response is considered more specifically in terms of how it impacts decision-
making as it relates to terrorism, and motivates people to seek out specific needs.
Finally, Section One concludes with a chapter by Wetherell, Weisz, Stolier,
Beavers, and Sadler (chapter 7). These authors present two theoretical models
(Attribution Theory and Appraisal Theory) as a means of examining how different
I N T R O D U CT I O N [xix]
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