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When the “Laws of Fear” Don’t Apply: Effective Counterterrorism and the Sense of Security from Terrorism.
Running head: When the “Laws of Fear” Don’t apply.
Aaron M. Hoffman (corresponding author)Department of Political Science
Purdue University100 North University St.
West Lafayette, IN. [email protected]
&William Shelby
Department of Political SciencePurdue University
100 North University St.West Lafayette, IN. 47907
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Shana Gadarian, Erin Hennes, Ariel Merari, Kimberly Marion Suiseeya, Jordan Tama, Laurel Weldon, and participants in Purdue University’s Jewish Studies Program Speaker Series and McGill University’s CIPSS Speaker Series for commenting on this manuscript. A special note of thanks to Purdue University’s Undergraduate Honors College and their students, who helped support this research.
Abstract: We investigate how effective counterterrorism influences (1) confidence in government efforts to deal with terrorism and (2) the sense of insecurity from attacks. Research on “heuristic judgments” implies information about counterterrorism undercuts people’s perceived security from terrorism. Across three experiments, however, we find that people who are exposed to information about effective counterterrorism express more confidence in governments to protect citizens from future attacks and prevent future violence than those who did not receive these treatments. People who receive information about effective counterterrorism also show greater willingness to travel to locations where the risk of terrorism is prominent than those who are only exposed to material about terrorism. Finally, counterterrorism information does not inevitably undermine government efforts to reassure people about their security. On the contrary, information about effective counterterrorism erased the effects of exposure to information about terrorism in one study.
Key words: Terrorism, counterterrorism, fear appeals, reassurance, experiments.
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The terrorism-related death toll is minor compared to other health risks, but attacks are so
threatening people seek comfort in ill-advised security measures that do more harm than good.
Indeed, getting societies to engage in self-injurious behavior while pursuing security may explain
why terrorism persists even though groups that use it rarely get what they want.
Some say governments can save people from themselves. Leaders of Israel’s Likud party,
for instance, believe military operations against Hamas make Israelis feel safer (Ganor, 2005, p.
102). On the surface, this seems like a reasonable conjecture. After all, robbing perpetrators of
their capacity for violence seems like a straightforward way of making them less intimidating.
Many security analysts, though, are skeptical of government efforts to neutralize
terrorism’s psychological effects. Counterterrorism, they say, has the unintended consequence of
reminding people about threats. Instead of providing reassurance, counterterrorism magnifies
people’s sense of danger.
Can governments escape this dilemma by engaging in counterterrorism in ways that make
people feel less threatened by terrorists or is insecurity counterterrorism’s inevitable byproduct?
In contrast to the skeptics, we argue that counterterrorism efforts are not doomed to backfire on
the people they are designed to protect as long as governments manage threats effectively.
Insecurity results from the sense that people cannot control their exposure to danger (Rothbaum,
Weisz, & Snyder 1982; Witte 1992). Efficacious counterterrorism alleviates this problem by
demonstrating that governments are in control and can check the threat of violence.
2
In three experiments, we demonstrate that information about effective counterterrorism
can reassure US citizens about their security when the threat of terrorism is salient.1 People
exposed to information effective counterterrorism express greater confidence in the ability of
governments to control terrorism and express less concern about the odds of future attacks.
Ineffectual counterterrorism efforts do not produce these effects.
Effective counterterrorism also decreases people’s concerns about traveling to potentially
dangerous locations. Insecurity breeds avoidance behavior, but people who viewed presentations
about Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) counterterrorism training exercises expressed greater
willingness to travel to Israel than those who a presentation about terrorism. The effects of the
IDF video were so strong people who saw it were as willing to travel to Israel as those who were
not reminded at all about terrorism or counterterrorism in Israel.
Success, as Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler (2005/2006) argue, boosts public morale during
foreign military campaigns. Work on retrospective voting (Fiorina 1981) suggests a similar
conclusion. Our research extends this thesis in two ways. First, we show that information about
effective counterterrorism can reduce people’s sense of insecurity when threats are near. Second,
we show that effective counterterrorism produces an intention to behave as if terrorism was not
threatening. Cowering responses to terrorist activity that result in self-defeating policies are
avoidable.
3
Terrorism and anxietyFinding ways to take the terror out of terrorism is arguably the central challenge in the
effort to reduce the use of this tactic. Since 2001, gun violence has claimed more lives in the US
than terrorists have over the same period (Bower 2016). The US government, however, spends
more to control terrorism than it does to reduce gun deaths. Far more, in fact, than can be
justified by reasonable cost-benefit analyses (Mueller & Stewart, 2011).
By terrorism, we mean the actual or threatened use of force by non-state actors for the
purpose of securing political goals through intimidation (Enders & Sandler, 2006). By all
accounts, it is a form of psychological warfare par excellence. People who are exposed to
terrorism either directly or via the mass media are at increased risk for PTSD-like symptoms
(Holman, Garfin, & Silver, 2014). They are also more likely to “protect” themselves against
attacks with measures that do more harm than good. Examples include driving instead of flying
even though automobile travel is more dangerous than air travel (Sjöberg, 2005) and vacationing
in Italy instead of Israel (Drakos & Kutan, 2003) even though Italy’s death rate per 1000
inhabitants is twice that of Israel (World Bank).
Anxiety is a natural response to threats.2 The problem is that targeted communities react
to terrorism in ways that magnify its social and political consequences. People’s propensity to
inflict harm on themselves compounds the damage terrorists are able to do themselves. These
responses also encourage subsequent attacks by showing perpetrators that their strikes work
(Kydd & Walter, 2006). Making terrorism less threatening would inhibit both of these tendencies
(Fromkin 1974; Mueller, 2006; Shanker & Schmitt, 2012).4
According to research on heuristic judgments (Khaneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982;
Sunstein, 2005), terrorism stimulates maladaptive reactions for two reasons: people believe
terrorism is uncontrollable and that it is a gruesome way to die. People experience greater levels
of anxiety when confronted with risks they cannot control, avoid, or protect themselves against
(Klar, Zakay, & Sharvit, 2002; Rothbaum, et al., 1982). People also react more strongly (and less
reasonably) when confronted with dread risks (Sjöberg, 2005).
Uncontrollable risks that produce strong affective reactions encourage defective decision
making, resulting in responses to terrorism that do more harm than good to targeted populations
(Sunstein, 2005). Instead of estimating the chances of attacks and the harm these strikes are
likely to cause, people focus on the anxiety they experience (Slovic & Peters, 2006). This
orientation leads people to embrace measures that help them restore their sense of security
without regard for how those choices influence their well-being.
For terrorists, the ability to stimulate maladaptive reactions among target populations is a
clear advantage. Small attacks can produce large, damaging effects. This is why experts like
Bruce Schneier (2006) say that the “surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized.”
Unfortunately, it is unclear how one would even begin taking the terror out of terrorism.
Recent developments in terrorism research are partially responsible for this state of affairs.
Anger is supplanting anxiety and insecurity as the focal point of research on the political
psychology of terrorism (Huddy, Feldman, Taber, & Lahav, 2005; Lerner & Keltner, 2001). The
big question in the literature on civilian targeting (Abrahms, 2006; Fortna, 2015) is why groups
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use terrorism at all in light of its poor record of long term political success? These are important
questions and we are not suggesting that scholars abandon them. That said, managing terrorism’s
effects are secondary concerns in this work. As such, they have little to say about ways to make
terrorism less intimidating short of eliminating it altogether.
The Psychology of CounterterrorismAlthough political scientists have not devoted a lot of attention to ways of reducing
terrorism’s psychological effects, they should be well positioned to do so. In the end, the job of
protecting people from terrorism falls on governments -- the political scientist’s stock-in-trade.
Surprisingly, though, there is a strong sense among experts that government
counterterrorism efforts increase people’s sense of vulnerability from terrorism. Cass Sunstein
goes so far as to argue that governments should not even talk about counterterrorism. Instead,
governments should “discuss something else and let time do the rest” (2005, 125).
While no one takes a harder line on counterterrorism’s counterproductive psychological
effects than Sunstein, he is not alone in believing that counterterrorism magnifies people’s sense
of insecurity. Terrorism experts English (2010, p. 121), Friedman (2011, p. 78), Mueller (2006),
and Wardlaw (1989, p. 94) all maintain that counterterrorism unnerves people by focusing their
attention on the presence of mortal threats. As Robert Jervis (2002) noted about police standing
on 5th Avenue in New York, visible security efforts can have unintended psychological effects.
Research by Grosskopf (2006), van de Veer et al. (2012), and McDermott and Zimbardo (2007)
confirm this point.
6
The idea that counterterrorism produces alarm rather than reassurance has its roots in
Darwinian arguments about the role anxiety plays in keeping people alive. According to this
view, anxiety is part and parcel of a system people rely on to alert them about threats to their
well-being (Marcus, Neuman, & Mackuen 2000; Mercer 2005). When people sense danger, their
brains initiate the release of stress hormones that quickly trigger adaptive responses.
The trouble is human preservation systems are prone to error. Since survival is
endangered more by indifference to risks than responsiveness to them, people evolved to be
hyper-sensitive to threats (Öhman, 2000). Consequently, people interpret stimuli from their
environment more ominously than logic warrants. Instead of asking whether they are likely to
suffer harm from an identified threat, people focus on the danger while either neglecting their
odds of injury (Sunstein 2003) or overestimating it (Braithwaite 2013). The body’s prime
directive is survival. Human security systems turn off only when threats are absent.
This sensitivity to danger signs explains why information about counterterrorism
generates insecurity. The need to defend against terrorism reminds people about the presence of
threats to their lives that their survival instincts cannot ignore.
The psychology of efficacious counterterrorism
The empirical record, however, does not support the contention that anxious responses to
counterterrorism are one of the “laws of fear,” as Sunstein calls it. On the contrary, there are
suggestions that counterterrorism can increase people’s sense of security (Nacos, Bloch-Elkin,
and Shapiro 2011 & Zussman and Zussman 2006). In this section, we advance a theory about the
7
conditions under which messages about counterterrorism reassure people. We argue that the
perceived quality of the counterterrorism strategies governments use distinguishes reassuring
communications from alarming ones.
We begin from the assumption that terrorism can be analyzed as a kind of “fear appeal,”
a message that deliberately arouses fear in order to motivate audiences to meet perpetrator
demands. Imarat Kavkazin, for example, uses terrorism to encourage Russia to relinquish its
control over territory in the North Caucuses. Capitulation to this demand is the approach Imarat
Kavkazin recommends to end the violence.
Fear appeals are widely used in health contexts. The idea behind this, according to the
Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) of fear appeals (Witte, 1992, 1994; Witte & Allen,
2000), is to arouse fear in order to encourage people to take protective action (Ruiter, Abraham,
& Kok, 2001, p. 614). Anti-smoking appeals, for example, might say “smoking kills” to warn
people about health risks associated with smoking. Messages like this play on the anxiety threats
create in order to motivate people to adopt risk management strategies (“quit” or “never start” in
the case of anti-smoking campaigns) designed to guard against hazards.3
Fear appeals by health professionals, however, have a spotty record of success. People
ignore them sometimes. Other times, fear appeals backfire by encouraging people to engage in
self-destructive behavior (Peters, Ruiter, and Kok 2013). EPPM addresses the factors that
distinguishes successful fear appeals from unsuccessful ones.
8
The EPPM suggests reactions to fear appeals are produced by the interaction of perceived
threat and the quality of proposed risk management strategies (Witte, 1992; Witte & Allen,
2000). Perceived threat levels determine whether people experience anxiety at all. Irrelevant and
low intensity threats are ignored. Non-drug users, for example, are expected to disregard
warnings about the dangers of sharing needles during intravenous drug use.
Significantly, relevant threats stimulate an assessment of the risk management proposals
that accompany these communications. The caliber of available risk mitigation strategies
determines whether people are reassured and behave sensibly in the face of threats. People are
reassured about their security and accept recommendations embedded in the communications
they receive when they see risk management strategies as effective (Gore & Bracken, 2005).
Reassurance reflects the knowledge that there are sensible ways of managing exposure to a risk.
Accepting the advice embedded in risk management strategies is the behavioral manifestation of
this state of mind.
People reject proposed risk management strategies and focus on controlling their anxiety
when they receive ineffectual precautionary advice. The physically unpleasant feeling of anxiety
motivates this search for relief (Clark 2011). Unfortunately, this effort can do more harm than
good. People prioritize controlling their emotions over reducing their risk of harm, an orientation
that makes strategies that control anxiety without controlling risk look attractive.
The challenges inherent in issuing health advisories that people will accept is similar to
the problem terrorists have getting people to accede to their demands. Instead of stirring people
9
to manage the risk of terrorism by capitulating to attackers’ demands, terrorism stimulates
anxiety control. Groups promise to halt their attacks in exchange for concessions, but using
terrorism destroys their credibility (Abrahms, 2013), making the risk management strategies
terrorists propose appear unreliable.
At this point, the EPPM has little to say about the role governments play in degrading
terrorism’s psychological effects. The EPPM is a theory about how individuals react to fear
appeals. If risk management strategies attached to fear appeals are defective in some basic way,
the EPPM suggests people will shift from controlling their risk of exposure to dangers to
controlling their sense of insecurity even if doing so is self-destructive. Governments have little
role to play in affecting these outcomes both because individuals are the principle decision
makers when personal health decisions are at issue and because EPPM theorists are skeptical
outside actors can make a difference.
Work on the psychology of control, however, suggests that people do not give up the
search for effective risk management strategies easily. The personal desire for control is strong --
so strong people rarely abandon the search for it.4 Yet, problems like terrorism do not lend
themselves to individual solutions, the first line of defense. In these cases, people look to actors,
like governments, to provide the control they crave. Risk management is fundamentally about
the ability to control exposure to danger. When individuals cannot control their exposure to
danger on their own, they look to powerful others to do it for them (Rothbaum, et al., 1982).
10
The failure of the public to find credible risk management strategies creates opportunities
for governments to step into the breach. People expect governments to provide security. Indeed,
governments are the only actors that possess the materiel and manpower to confront terrorist
organizations. Therefore, people turn to government because of their inclination to look to
powerful actors for help when they cannot control risks such as terrorism themselves (Merolla,
Ramos, & Zechmeister, 2007).
The search for “vicarious secondary control” (Morling & Evered 2006, 270) is not
reflexive, however.5 Governments have to demonstrate the ability to manage the threat of
terrorism to satisfy people’s search for secondary control. When governments do this, citizens
find government action reassuring. When governments fail, the results can create instability and
fear of future attacks. Because of the stakes, it is important for governments to ensure they are
taking the right steps to mitigate fears of terrorism.
Research designIn this section, we describe the research design we used to examine whether information
about effective counterterrorism increases people’s (1) confidence in the ability of governments
to protect them from future attacks and (2) intention to approach terrorism affected areas. The
first question has been the subject of research using aggregate data on public opinion; the second
question is a logical extension of the first. Both questions are consistent with the EPPM and
locus of control literatures.
11
We examined these relationships using a series of laboratory experiments. Previous tests
of these propositions have been conducted in natural settings using aggregate data (e.g., stock
market prices). This approach makes it difficult to determine whether counterterrorism has
individual level effects (see Bausch, Faria, & Zeitzoff 2013 for an exception). It also raises
questions about the internal validity of the observed associations. Frightened people are more
inclined than calm ones to search for reassuring information (Gadarian, 2010), creating an
inferential problem. Drawing conclusions about the consequences of counterterrorism by
observing people who voluntarily expose themselves to this material risks mistaking the effects
of government action for the effects of prior emotional states. Laboratory experiments offer
solutions to both of these issues.
The subjective sense of insecurity from terrorism is the dependent variable in these
studies. We measured it by asking people about their confidence in their government’s ability to
protect them from attacks and about their willingness to travel to a terrorism affected area. Both
of these measures are used in extant research to assess people’s subjective sense of threat from
terrorism, facilitating comparisons between our findings and existing ones. (e.g., Huddy, Khatib,
& Capelos 2002).
Each study was devised with an eye toward maximizing the authenticity of the stimuli
volunteers received. Most Americans are exposed to terrorism and counterterrorism via the mass
media. Recognizing this we used treatments that people might encounter in the news or on social
media. Two of the treatments are drawn from material the IDF released on its Twitter feed
12
(@IDFSpokesperson). A third appeared on CNN. The remaining treatments are modeled on wire
service reports that appear in U.S. newspapers and on websites.
[Table 1 here]
All three experiments had IRB approval and were conducted using a website developed
by Richard Lau and David Redlawsk called the Dynamic Process Tracing Environment.
Volunteers gained access to the studies via electronic link and were permitted to complete the
protocols from any location with internet service. Each study began with a presentation about the
risks associated with participation and the protections in place to safeguard participants’
anonymity. Those that consented to participate received a demographic questionnaire, a
randomly assigned treatment, and follow-up questions.6 Volunteers were then debriefed,
thanked, and compensated for their time. An overview of each study appears in Table 1.
We recruited volunteers for our first study from consumer sciences and political science
courses taught at a large Midwestern University. We recruited participants for studies 2 and 3
through Mechanical Turk (AMT), an on-line labor market run by Amazon.com (see Berinsky,
Huber, & Lenz 2012 for details).7
Our recruits are appropriate for testing hypotheses about the direction of the relationship
between effective counterterrorism and reassurance. The theoretical frameworks that inform this
research assume reactions to material about terrorism and counterterrorism are universal, driven
by psychological processes everyone experiences. National probability samples are unnecessary
in these situations, since everyone is assumed to react the same way (Calder, Phillips, & Tybout
13
1982; Mook, 1983). Eschewing national probability samples in this research mainly limits our
ability to draw inferences about the size of the effects we observe in the laboratory outside of it.
Extant research on psychological reactions to terrorism (e.g., Bonanno, Galea,
Bucciarelli, & Vlahov, 2007) buttress the view that attacks produce homogenous effects among
targeted populations: gender, age, and education influence the intensity, but not the type of
reactions people have to attacks. Research on information that increases perceptions of response
effectiveness comes to a similar conclusion (Ruiter, Kessels, Peters, & Kok 2014). The
treatments we use might cause disparate reactions among particular groups (e.g., Palestinians to
Israeli counterterrorism), but in studies 1 and 2 we had no reason to suspect that our recruitment
strategy would yield many people like this. In study 3, we thought Jewish respondents might
react differently to questions about traveling to Israel, so we controlled for these individuals in
our analyses.
We analyzed the data from each study using ANOVA even though this is not always the
optimal choice given the dependent variables we used. We used ANOVA to simplify the
interpretation of our results, but we also checked all our results using ordered logit when our
dependent variable was measured at an ordinal level. Tabular presentations of these robustness
checks appear in the online appendix.
Study 1
This study examined how college students react to information about FBI responses to
international and domestic terrorism on college campuses. Bomb threats against colleges and
14
universities were an issue when we conducted this study (November 26, 2012-May 20, 2013). In
April 2013, an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated on the campus of Purdue
University-Calumet (PUC) (Hayes, 2012). Four months earlier, police found an IED near student
housing on the PUC campus (Sheets, 2012). Authorities also found an IED at the University of
Central Florida in March 2013 (Koplowitz, 2013).
Events at the University of Pittsburgh in 2012, however, inspired this study most.
Between February and April, “The Threateners” issued more than 100 bomb threats against the
University, forcing repeated evacuations and bomb searches on campus (see Preston, 2012 for an
account). The events drew the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force to the University to assist local
authorities in their investigation.
The specific question we examined in this study is whether news about FBI involvement
in terrorism related investigations on campus reassures students about their security? Available
public opinion polls imply people have a favorable impression of the FBI’s counterterrorism
capabilities. In September 2002, 56% of respondents to an ABC poll said the FBI was doing
either a good or an excellent job dealing with 9/11 and its aftermath.8 In 2003, 52% rated the
FBI’s efforts as either “good” or “excellent.” In 2004, a plurality of respondents (49%), reported
having either “a great deal” or “quite a lot of confidence” in FBI counterterrorism efforts. This
scenario, in other words, does a good job of pitting the competing perspectives on the
psychological consequences of counterterrorism against one another.
15
Deviating from the University of Pittsburgh situation, we replaced the previously
unknown “Threateners” with threats from al Qaeda and Sovereign Citizens. We chose al Qaeda
because it was seen as the international terrorist organization that presented the greatest danger to
US interests at the time. We selected Sovereign Citizens because of its status as one of the
serious domestic terrorist threats to US security. We expected people in the al Qaeda conditions
to experience more insecurity than those in the Sovereign Citizens conditions.9
Participants
282 undergraduates enrolled in consumer sciences and political science courses at a large
Midwestern University were recruited for a two (domestic versus international terrorism
scenario) x two (FBI warns about terrorist activity versus FBI prevents terrorist activity)
between-subjects experimental design. About 51% of participants were women. Volunteers had
an average age of 20 (SD=3.26). An oversight on our part cost us information on the party
affiliations of more than half of our volunteers. Roughly 40% of those we do have information
on self-identified as Republicans, while thirty-four percent self-identified as Democrats. The
remaining volunteers self-identified as either Independents or “other.” Students received some
extra credit toward their final grades for participating.
Volunteers each received a fake wire service report, modeled on those appearing in
newspapers, describing possible terrorist activity on a university campus (see the appendix for
text). Half of the participants were told the FBI was concerned about the threat from Sovereign
Citizens. The other half were told al Qaeda was the source of the threat.
16
Volunteers also learned about FBI responses to the threats. People in the ineffective
response condition were told the FBI issued a warning about terrorist activity on campus. Those
in the effective response condition were told the FBI disrupted a plot by one of the groups. We
expect the effective response to be more reassuring than the ineffective one.
After presenting the treatments, we asked our participants about their confidence in “the
US government’s ability to prevent future terrorist attacks” and “ability to protect its citizens
from attacks” (e.g., “Please tell me if you are very confident, somewhat confident, not very
confident, or not at all confident in the Israeli government's ability to protect its citizens from
attacks”). We also asked questions about the likelihood of a terrorist attack “somewhere within
the United States,” whether participants will “experience an act of terrorism,” and whether
someone they “know well will be the victim of a terrorist attack within the United States?”
Breckenridge et al (2010) used these questions to assess whether people fall victim to “optimistic
bias,” a belief that they are less vulnerable to risks than their friends or family. Wording for the
questions appear in the appendix.
Results
We restricted our analysis to those respondents who demonstrated that they paid attention
to the information they received. We did this because we are interested in the effects of
information about counterterrorism and would not know how to interpret findings produced by
inattentive volunteers. We also needed a way to identify careless participants since we rewarded
participants for completing the study, not completing it carefully.
17
We analyzed our data using ANOVA. The results suggest people’s assessments of the US
government’s ability to keep them safe are influenced by the interaction of messages about FBI
counterterrorism efforts and the type of threat [F(3,197)=2.04, p<.1]. Digging deeper, we found
that information about effective FBI counterterrorism efforts increased confidence in the US
government’s ability to prevent attacks [F(1, 100)=2.89, p<.09] and to keep its citizens safe
[F(1,99)=4.84, p<.05] among those in the domestic terrorism condition. Information about the
FBI, however, had no effect on those in the international terrorism condition.10
While information about the FBI did not reassure people assigned to the international
terrorism condition, it also did not increase anxiety about terrorist attacks [F(1,197)=0.37, p>.1]
nor make people more concerned about their security [F(1,197)=0.49, p>.1] or the security of
people they know [F(1,197)=1.13, p>.1]. This test, in other words, does not suggest that
counterterrorism exacerbates people’s sense of insecurity.
Discussion
The conditional relationship between terrorist organizations and FBI responses is
consistent with our expectations based on the EPPM and locus of control literatures, but not
exactly what we predicted. We expected information about efficacious counterterrorism would
reassure people regardless of the identity of the threatening organization. We found, however,
that the FBI’s counterterrorism success reassured participants only when Sovereign Citizens
posed the threat. This suggests efficacious counterterrorism matters in context, not above all else.
18
This result is echoed in the wider literature on success in military operations (Hoffman, Agnew,
VanderDrift, & Kulzick 2015).
Relatedly, this study suggests that there are conditions under which governments can
reveal their counterterrorism accomplishments without making people feel more vulnerable to
attack. Mentions of FBI counterterrorism efforts did not increase anxiety levels about future
attacks or vulnerability to violence. Anxious responses to threats do not appear to be inevitable.
Military responses to terrorism also do not appear to be the only way governments can
reassure their citizens. Israeli officials have focused on using military force to inoculate their
citizens against terrorism’s deleterious psychological effects, but it appears the public can also
take solace from policing efforts. Methods of mitigating terrorism-induced anxiety that draw on
lessons from efforts to manage the fear of crime may prove fruitful (Lynch, 2011).
Finally, this study provides its own evidence that the results we reported cannot be
dismissed because we relied on undergraduate research subjects. Undergraduates are supposed to
be impressionable and inclined to give investigators the responses investigators want, producing
falsely positive results (Sears 1986). Yet, studies that use volunteers who tell researchers what
they want to hear get simple findings, not complex ones. The volunteers in this study might react
either more strongly or more weakly to information about effective counterterrorism than the
general public, but their selective responses to our cues suggests the responses we observed have
more to do with the treatments we used than the people we recruited.
Study 2
19
Study 2 examines the effects of a counterterrorism messages sent by the Israeli military
on the sense of security of people living in the US during a period of intense fighting between
Israel and Hamas (20 November 2012, between 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. EST). Israel’s message,
sent via Twitter on Wednesday 14 November 2012 announced the “elimination” of Ahmed al-
Jabari, who commanded Hamas’ military (the announcement is in the appendix). It also marked
the start of a week-long offensive by Israel against Hamas.
Counterterrorism efforts are often in the news when threats appear immanent, but
recreating this sense in the laboratory presents a challenge. Israel’s offensive solved this
problem, so we seized this unexpected opportunity to examine the effects of counterterrorism
information during a crisis.
This was classic “firehouse” research. The time pressure we faced to design and get IRB
approval for this study forced us to make compromises. We could not test the effects of Israel’s
announcement on Israelis. Instead, we relied on the reactions of Americans living in the United
States. We also did not include a treatment depicting terrorism, preventing us from examining
our subjects’ sensitivity to this information.
Even so, this study’s ability to illuminate how an actual counterterrorism communication
influences people during an ongoing terrorism crisis made it worth pursuing. Additionally, the
study allows us to examine the psychological effects of assassinations at the individual level.
Polls suggest that Americans believe assassinations control the threat of terrorism (see Smeltz &
Daalder 2014), but we do not know if these attacks influence people’s sense of security directly.
20
This study provides the first controlled trial of the effectiveness of the Israeli Defense Forces’
effort to counter its enemies via social media.
Participants
Against this background, we recruited 120 volunteers through AMT for a study of their
responses to “questions about current events.” Participants ranged in age from 20 to 62
(mean=34.5, S.D.=12.4) and received $1 in exchange for ten minutes of their time. About sixty-
one percent (60.7%) of our recruits were men. 75.8% percent of the volunteers reported having at
least some college education. 52.6% of respondents self-identified as Democrats, 30.3%
identified as Independents, and 10.7% called themselves Republicans. The remaining
respondents selected “other” as their partisan affiliation.
Materials and procedures
We began by administering a demographic questionnaire and questions about attention to
the fighting in Israel. We also asked about our participants’ attention to the controversy in the US
over the 11 September 2012 attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya that killed
Christopher Hill, an American diplomat. Apropos of the intensity of the event, just under 93% of
those who volunteered for our study reported following the violence in Israel at least a little,
making our subject pool full of the kind of people who might see a message about
counterterrorism during a crisis.11
21
Volunteers assigned to the baseline condition then received six questions gauging their
confidence in the ability of the Israeli and U.S. governments to protect against future strikes
(e.g., “Please tell me if you are very confident, somewhat confident, not very confident, or not at
all confident in the Israeli government's ability to protect its citizens from attacks”) and their
concern about future attacks (e.g., “In the past, Hamas has threatened to attack the United States
in retaliation against Israeli strikes. On a scale from 0 ('totally unlikely to occur') to 100
('absolutely certain to occur'), how likely do you feel it is that Hamas will attack the United
States as a result of its support of the Israeli government?”). Those in the experimental condition
viewed the IDF’s tweet before answering these items.
Results
Our analyses suggest the IDF’s message increased people’s confidence in the ability of
the US and Israeli governments to deal with future terrorist activity without increasing their
anxiety about future attacks. Those who saw the IDF’s tweet expressed more confidence in (1)
Israel’s ability to prevent attacks [F(1,103)=5.56, p<.05], (2) the US’ ability to prevent attacks
[F(1,103)=4.28, p<.05] and (3) the US’s ability to protect its citizens [F(1,103)=2.82, p<.1] . The
tweet, though, did not influence people’s confidence in the Israeli government’s ability to protect
its citizens [F(1,103)=0.71, p>.1].
While the IDF’s tweet increased confidence in the US and Israeli governments’
counterterrorism capabilities, it did not raise concerns about retaliation by either Hamas [F (1,
22
103)=0.04, p>.1] or al Qaeda [F (1, 103)=1.65, p>.1]. Those who saw Israel’s message were no
more concerned about future attacks than those who did not see the message.
Discussion
This experiment suggests that information about effective counterterrorism by the IDF
increases Americans’ confidence in the Israeli and US governments’ ability to deal with
terrorism during an ongoing crisis. This result complements Zussman and Zussman’s (2006)
work showing prices on the Israeli stock market increase after targeted assassinations of
suspected terrorists by demonstrating individual level effects of these attacks.
Unlike Study 1, this study also suggests that effective counterterrorism reassures people
facing threats from international terrorism. There are many plausible explanations for the
different result across the two studies, but public faith in the value of targeted killings stands out
as a possible difference maker. Americans are less convinced the FBI can deal with the threat of
terrorism and took no succor from reports about the agency when foreign terrorists were in the
mix.
Finally, this study once again offers little support for the idea that information about
counterterrorism stimulates feelings of insecurity. Negative responses to the tweet were possible
given that the IDF’s message taunts as much as it informs. Nevertheless, we found no evidence
that the message increased people’s sense of vulnerability to retaliatory strikes over those who
did not see it.
23
Study 3
In Study 3, we examined the effects of reports about Israel’s experience with terrorism
and its efforts to deal with attacks on the willingness of U.S. residents to travel there. Danger
avoidance is a common reaction to threats (Lerner and Keltner 2001). This study examines
whether information about effective counterterrorism can diminish this response.
Study 3 builds on the previous two in several ways. First, the study examines whether
effective counterterrorism influences people’s intention to act in ways consistent with the
information they receive about risk management. The EPPM suggests that efficacious risk
management strategies should change behavior, but studies 1 and 2 only examine whether these
strategies reassured recipients. This study examines the behavioral consequences of
counterterrorism communiqués. Second, this study employs a different, but related dependent
variable – the desire to travel to a terrorism-affected country (Israel). One way to establish the
robustness of relationships is by testing them under variable conditions. Study 3 does that.
Finally, this study examines whether counterterrorism preparations reassure people. The previous
studies examined reactions to attacks, but it is clear that states also take steps to control terrorism
before it happens.
Participants
Between November 3rd and 17th, 2013, we recruited 300 volunteers from AMT for a
study examining “attitudes about foreign travel.” Just under sixty percent of those who
volunteered were men (N=176). Participants ranged in age from 18 to 71 (mean=33.85,
24
s.d.=11.68) and tended to identify as democrats (49%). Republicans constituted 17% of the pool;
28% were independents. 6% said they had “other” political affiliations. Six participants said they
were “Jewish.” We controlled for these six people in our analyses. Jewish participants might
react to information about terrorism and counterterrorism in Israel differently than others given
Israel’s identity as the Jewish state.
Methods and procedures
Subjects were assigned at random into one of three groups in a between-subjects design.
Group one, the baseline group, received no information about either terrorism or
counterterrorism. Those in group two were exposed to a thirty-four second clip from CNN news
depicting the aftermath of a bus bombing in Israel; Breckenridge et al (2010) used this video in
their work.12 Subjects in group three saw the CNN video followed by a 1 minute 25 second video
of an IDF hostage rescue training exercise the IDF released via Twitter and YouTube.13
After receiving the treatments, we used a modified version of a question Gallup asks
about people’s willingness to travel to Israel (“If money were no object, please tell me on a scale
of 0 to 100, with 0 meaning totally unlikely to visit and 100 meaning absolutely certain to visit
how likely it is that you would travel to Israel”). We also asked about confidence in the Israeli
government’s counterterrorism efforts using the questions from Study 1.
Results
25
Using ANOVA, we determined that people in the baseline and counterterrorism video
conditions were more willing to travel to Israel than people who saw the terrorism video only
[F(2,297)=6.40, p<.01]. People who saw only the terrorism video were nearly 9 point (b=8.96,
p<.05 95% CI [-17.02 -0.91]) less enthusiastic about traveling to Israel than people in the
baseline and counterterrorism video conditions. This result controls for the responses of Jewish
participants in our study, who showed heightened interest in traveling to Israel (b=38.22, p<.01
95 CI [11.84 64.61]).
[Figure 1 here]
While seeing the terrorism video on its own dampened people’s enthusiasm for travel to
Israel, the counterterrorism video erased this effect. People who saw the counterterrorism video
after the terrorism video were just as enthusiastic about traveling to Israel as those in the baseline
condition. Figure 3, above, displays the willingness of participants to travel to Israel across these
experimental treatments.
In addition to indicating a weaker intention to travel to Israel, volunteers who saw just the
terrorism video expressed less confidence in the Israeli government’s ability to protect citizens
from future attacks than those in the baseline and counterterrorism conditions [F(2,287)=2.50,
p<.1]. This effect on attitudes is consistent with those reported in the previous two studies. Our
treatments, however, did not influence beliefs about Israel’s ability to prevent terrorism. The
significant F test [F(2,285)=2.5, p<1] reflects the greater optimism of Jewish respondents.
Discussion
26
Study 3 suggests that information about effective counterterrorism can reduce avoidance
reactions associated with terrorist activity, while also increasing confidence in government
counterterrorism efforts. These results are consistent with predictions based on the EPPM. The
results also support the claim in work on the locus of control that efficacious action by powerful
action can act as a substitute for individual action.
More importantly, from the perspective of those interested in undercutting terrorism’s
psychological punch, these outcomes represent a challenge to the idea that governments cannot
change people’s reactions to intimidation efforts by militants. A portion of the damage terrorists
do is caused by terrorized people acting in anticipation of future strikes. This study suggests that
governments have a say in just how vulnerable their societies are to this activity.
These results also suggest, once again, that negative reactions to counterterrorism
messages are not inevitable. While those exposed to just the terrorism video reacted as expected,
by expressing less interest in traveling to Israel, those who saw the terrorism and
counterterrorism videos reacted as if they had not been exposed to these treatments at all. Here,
comparisons to the baseline condition are important. Our inability to distinguish between people
who got both terrorism and counterterrorism messages and a group who got none of these
messages suggests that counterterrorism communiqués do not invariably raise levels of
insecurity beyond background levels.
Finally, this experiment suggests another explanation for the insensitivity of American
tourists to media reports of terrorist activity in Israel. According to Fielding and Shortland
27
(2009), actual Israeli casualties, not reported ones, discourage American tourists from traveling
to Israel. Fielding and Shortland conclude this to mean that US audiences routinely get
information about terrorism in Israel from non-media sources (e.g., friends and family). In
contrast, our work suggests that media reports about Israeli casualties may be negated by reports
about Israel’s counterterrorism efforts. People who get their information from non-media sources
do not receive these counterterrorism messages and, therefore, respond to terrorism in Israel
differently than people who rely on the media for their news.
General Discussion
Together, the three studies reported above suggest that information about effective
counterterrorism can increase confidence in the capacity of governments to meet terrorism’s
challenges. Individuals across the studies who received information about effective
counterterrorism indicated greater confidence in the ability of governments to deal with terrorism
than those who did not view this material. Militarized counterterrorism efforts produced the
strongest results, but criminal justice efforts worked too.
Although the results we report across three studies support the idea that effective
counterterrorism can be reassuring, we do not appear to be explaining a lot of the variance in the
counterterrorism attitudes we examined (i.e., the models have low R2 statistics). Omitted variable
bias is surely playing a role in this. There are a host of variables, especially at the individual
level, that we could have used to reduce heterogeneity among our subjects. By excluding these
28
covariates, we accepted less precise estimates of the size of our treatment effects in favor of a
tougher test of effective counterterrorism.
As we argued earlier, laboratory experiments with convenience samples are not ideal for
assessing how strongly the general population responds to effective counterterrorism.
Nevertheless, available US public opinion data suggests that the reactions we observed in our
laboratory can be found outside it (see Figure 2). Pollsters asked Americans about their
confidence in the U.S. government’s ability to prevent terrorism twenty-five times. Public
confidence in US counterterrorism capabilities exceeds mean confidence levels across all the
polls by more than one standard deviation five times. Significant counterterrorism efforts (e.g.,
Osama bin Laden killed) preceded four of these polls.14
[Figure 2 here]
The studies also cast doubt on the idea that counterterrorism necessarily increases
feelings of insecurity. This is a significant finding by itself. Feelings of insecurity are associated
with a range of damaging societal effects ranging from increased ethnocentrism (Kam & Kinder,
2007) and more pronounced gender stereotypes (Greenberg & Kosloff, 2008) to a rise in
authoritarian attitudes (Merolla & Zechmeister, 2009) and greater faith in hawkish foreign
policies (Gadarian, 2010). The ability of governments to respond to terrorism effectively may
play a role in determining the degree to which people experience insecurity at all.
Responses to the polling question, “How concerned are you about the possibility there
will be more major terrorist attacks in the United States?” also suggest that concerns about ironic
29
responses to effective counterterrorism are exaggerated (see the appendix). There are some
counterterrorism events that appear to stimulate insecurity (e.g., the assassination of Osama bin
Laden), but not all of them. Sunstein and others in the heuristic judgement school may be
underestimating people’s ability to learn new responses to information they receive.
Expanding this idea further, it appears that the mass media can ease people’s sense of
insecurity from terrorism. The media is usually cast as terrorism’s partner in crime because of its
willingness to present shocking material to the public (Nacos, 2000). Sensational stories,
however, are not the only messages that get communicated by the press. Counterterrorism gets
reported too (Hoffman, et al., 2010), but even when journalists ignore what governments do,
Twitter and other social media sites allow governments to deliver messages on their own.
Conclusion
“The aim of terrorism,” as Lenin explained, “is to terrify.” Yet, governments focus on
preventing the next attack by attending to material aspects of security: fortifying targets,
increasing executive authority, recruiting first-responders, and monitoring suspicious activity.
Neutralizing terrorism’s psychological effects is mostly an afterthought. The Nigerian
government’s poor handling of Boko Haram’s outrages suggests governments may not even
consider whether communicating counterterrorism competence is consequential.
30
Ceding terrorism’s psychological effects to perpetrators is an unjustified concession to
attackers that perpetuates the illusion that terrorism works. The sense of insecurity terrorism
engenders can be managed. Based on the results of our three experiments, concerns about
counterterrorism’s tendency to backfire are overstated.
Still, there are questions that remain. We cannot say how long the effects of messages
about effective counterterrorism last. The insecurity stimulated by spectacular attacks is difficult
to recreate in laboratories, making it harder to know if effective counterterrorism reassures under
extreme circumstances. Our experiments also assume a basic level of trust in government. Less
credible governments may not be able to reassure their citizens.
Even with these caveats, our results point to a narrow, but important conclusion: the
immediate psychological effects of mundane terrorist attacks may be countered with messages
about effective countermeasures. Replicating the World War II era “Keep calm and carry on”
campaign probably will not work, but messages emphasizing results can help people avoid the
self-inflicted wounds that make terrorism a potent weapon.
31
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Table 1: Effects of successful counterterrorism: the experimental designs.
Experiment 1
Hypothesis: Effective counterterrorism increases college students' confidence in US ability to control terrorist activity; foreign terrorist organizations more concerning than domestic terrorist organizations.
Sample: 282 undergraduates enrolled at a large Midwestern university.Independent variable: FBI counterterrorism actions; type of terrorist organizations.
Levels of independent variable: FBI: warns of attacks vs. arrests conspirators; domestic vs. foreign terrorist organizations.Dependent variables: Confidence in government counterterrorism effectiveness; estimated likelihood of attacks.
Experiment 2Hypotheses: Effective counterterrorism increases people’s confidence in Israeli and US ability to control terrorism.
Sample: 120 people, recruited through Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk website.Independent variables: Exposure to Israel Defense Forces tweet announcing “elimination” of Ahmed Jabari.
Levels of independent variables: No exposure vs. exposure.Dependent variables: Confidence in government counterterrorism effectiveness; Estimated likelihood of attacks.
Experiment 3Hypothesis: Effective counterterrorism increases people's willingness to travel to Israel.
Sample: 300 people, recruited through Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk website. Independent variables: CNN video of terrorist attack in Israel; IDF counterterrorism training video.
Levels of independent variables: Exposure to: no video; terrorism video only; both terrorism and counterterrorism videos.Dependent variable: Willingness to travel to Israel; confidence in government counterterrorism effectiveness.
36
37
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Figure 2: Confidence U.S. can prevent terrorism
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9/11 WTC bombers caught
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OBL calls for ji-had
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Endnotes38
39
1 Replication files for these experiments, along with the appendix to this article, can be found at http://aaronmhoffman.com.
2 We use the word anxiety to denote a range of related negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and worry.3 In the EPPM literature, risk management proposals are also known as danger control proposals.4 Some say the desire for control has evolutionary roots (e.g., Leotti, Iyengar, and Ochsner 2010). We do not take a position in this claim, but we agree that the desire for control is a fundamental psychological drive.5 Vicarious secondary control is one of several types of secondary control. See Morling and Evered (2006) for a discussion of secondary control and its various incarnations.6 Participants were not told in advance about the condition assignment they received. Balance checks for each study (see appendix) did not identify systematic differences in our experimental groups.7 Volunteers had to have worker quality ratings of 90% or better to qualify.8 Polls prior to this one, but after 9/11 showed the public had a negative assessment of the FBI’s effectiveness.9 This expectation is also consistent with work suggesting that international terrorism is more alarming than domestic terrorism (Garcia & Geva 2014).10 We analyzed the interactive conditions using a series of using one-way ANOVA. We confirmed the results using Tukey’s HSD test and ordered logit (see appendix).11 Less than 10% of those in our experimental condition saw the treatment we used before taking part in our study.12 Thanks to Jim Breckenridge for sharing this video with us. A copy is available through the authors upon request.13 See the IDF training video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rDllZxzLUM14 Significant terrorist events (e.g., Oklahoma City bombing) preceded the four polls in which public confidence in the government’s counterterrorism efforts is lowest.
