The (Non)Impact of the 2015 Paris Terrorist Attacks on Political Attitudes

Sociotropic and Personal Threats and Authoritarian Reactions During COVID-19

The authoritarianism literature is divided over whether perceived threats to normative social order (sociotropic threats) or threats to the individual's well-being (personal threats) activate authoritarian predispositions. In addition, while some approaches claim that perceived threats primarily trigger those high in authoritarianism, others claim that those who are low in authoritarianism are more sensitive to threats. Given the centrality of authoritarianism and threat on support for extraordinary policies in the context of COVID-19, this article sought to test to what extent different types of threats moderated the effect of authoritarianism on support for tough law and order policies and harsh punishments to contain the spread of coronavirus. Data from two preregistered survey experiments indicates that those high in authoritarianism were more willing to support tough law and order policies when primed with sociotropic threats while those low in authoritarianism became more willing to support such policies when primed with personal threats.

Assessing the relationship between terrorist attacks against ingroup or outgroup members and public support for terrorism

Terrorist groups rely on constituency support for their long-term survival. Here, we examined the extent to which terrorists’ own activities are related with public opinion on terrorism. Specifically, we assessed whether more frequent and more costly terrorist attacks against the ingroup are associated with war weariness or retaliatory sentiments, thus, either weaker or stronger approval of terrorism. We further investigated if more frequent and costly attacks that target an outgroup predict higher levels of justification of terrorism. Lastly, we identified the timeframe during which domestic and outgroup terrorist attacks correlate with (lower or higher) public support. The analyses focused on Jordan (ingroup) and Israel (outgroup), over an 8-year period (2004–2011), drawing on data from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey and the Global Terrorism Database. Results showed that support for terrorism in Jordan decreased in 2005 and, again, in 2008. The frequency of terrorist attacks and fatality/injury rates in Jordan did not vary significantly during the study period. The number of attacks and fatalities/people injured in Israel, however, changed between 2004 and 2011. Cross-correlations of the time-series further demonstrated that the number of attacks and fatalities/people injured in Jordan was not related with the level of public approval of terrorism in the country. Importantly, and in line with the literature, the casualty rate in Israel was positively associated with support for terrorism in Jordan, in the next year. That is, there is evidence that more/less costly terrorist attacks on an outgroup can predict stronger/weaker public support for the tactic relatively quickly. Those findings provide insights for counter-terrorism measures.

Mortality Salience Effects of Critical Incidents - A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda

Critical incidents (CI) trigger acute stress reactions and psychological trauma because of direct or vicarious exposure. These events include natural disasters, wars, terrorist attacks and pandemics, and usually result in deaths and serious physical injuries. Their life-threatening nature makes them reasonable candidates to induce mortality salience (MS). The current review aims to consolidate Terror Management Theory (TMT) research using CIs as MS. A systematic literature review was conducted. Overall, 74 articles with 113 studies were included. Through this review, strong support for MS effects of CI has been found. Consistent with TMT, CIs tend to trigger worldview defence, self-esteem enhancement and relationship seeking. CIs have also been found to impact negatively on individual well-being and organisational health. Recommendations specific to crisis interventions and well-being will be discussed. The review concludes with potential future research directions to strengthen and expand empirical knowledge in CI salience.

The Advent of the COVID-19 Epidemic Did Not Affect Americans' Endorsement of Moral Foundations

Prior work has suggested that existential threats in the form of terror attacks may shift liberals’ reliance on moral foundations to more resemble those of conservatives. We therefore hypothesized that endorsement of these moral foundations would have increased when the COVID-19 epidemic became a salient threat. To examine this hypothesis we conducted a longitudinal study with 237 American participants across the liberal-conservative spectrum, in which their endorsement of various moral foundations were measured before and after the advent of the pandemic. We did not find evidence of any systematic change in the endorsement of any moral foundation, neither in general nor specifically among liberals or specifically among those who perceived the greatest threat from COVID-19. We conclude that the threat from the pandemic does not seem to have had any substantial effect on the moral foundations that people rely on. We discuss how this finding relates to other longitudinal studies of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on measures related to conservatism.

The dynamics of negative stereotypes as revealed by tweeting behavior in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack

We describe the evolution of a stereotype as it emerged in tweets about the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris in early 2015. Our focus is on terms associated with the Muslim community and the Islamic world. The data (400k tweets) were collected via Twitter streaming API and consisted of tweets that contained at least one of 16 hashtags associated with the Charlie Hebdo attack (e.g., #JeSuisCharlie, #IAmCharlie, #ParisAttacks), collected between January 14th and February 9th. From these data, we generated pairwise co-occurrence frequencies between key words such as “Islam”, “Muslim(s)”, “Arab(s)”, and “The Prophet” and possible associates such as: “terrorism”, “terror”, “terrorist(s)”, “kill(ed)”, “free”, “freedom” and “love”. We use changes in frequency of co-occurring words to define ways in which acute negative and positive stereotypes towards Muslims and Islam arise and evolve in three phases during the period of interest. We identify a positively-valenced backlash in a subset of tweets associated with the “origins of Islam”. Results depict the emergence and transformation of implicit online stereotypes related to Islam from naturally occurring social media data and how pro-as well as anti-Islam online small-world networks evolve in response to a terrorist attack.

United in Diversity, Divided in Adversity? Support for Right-Wing Eurosceptic Parties in the Face of Threat Differs Across Nations

This article investigates whether the perceived threat of terrorism explains the support for right-wing Eurosceptic parties and Euroscepticism above and beyond other relevant variables, including perceived economic and immigration threats. We first examined the entire Eurobarometer samples of 2014 and 2015, and then conducted survey experiments in four European Union (EU) countries, that is, United Kingdom (N = 197), France (N = 164), Italy (N = 312), and Romania (N = 144). Our findings suggest that the perceived threat of terrorism has a small effect on the negative attitudes toward the EU above and beyond the effect of immigration and economic threats and other basic control variables. The relationship between these variables varies across countries and it is less linear than we might expect.