Knowing is Half the Battle: How Education Decreases the Fear of Terrorism

• Author: Peter Krause,Daniel Gustafson,Jordan Theriault,Liane Young
• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Date: 01 August 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00220027221079648
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2022, Vol. 66(7-8) 1147–1173

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027221079648

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Knowing is Half the Battle:

How Education Decreases

the Fear of Terrorism

Peter Krause

1

, Daniel Gustafson

2

, Jordan Theriault

3

, and

Liane Young

4

Abstract

Although only 23 people on average have been killed per year by terrorist attacks in the

United States since 2001, American citizens and politicians consistently rank terrorism

as a top security threat, leading to costly wars abroad and the repression of civil

liberties at home. To what extent can education about terrorism alter perceptions of

the threat? Much existing scholarship—and consistent polling over the past two

decades—suggests that it cannot, but we disagree. Evidence gathered from an extensive

series of experimental and observational surveys involving students in 31 terrorism and

non-terrorism related courses at 12 universities—including massive open online

courses (MOOC) and online surveys—reveals that the more individuals learn about

terrorism, the smaller they perceive the threat to be to themselves and to the U.S. In

the f‌ight against terrorism and the fear it inspires, knowing really is half the battle.

Keywords

terrorism, fear, threat perception, attitude change, public opinion, education

1

Department of Political Science, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

2

Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

3

Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

4

Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Peter Krause, Department of Political Science, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill,

MA 02467, USA.

Email: peter.krause.2@bc.edu

Terrorist attacks’main impact comes not from those killed—3 people on average per

attack, and most commonly none—but rather from the fear they inspire “in an audience

beyond the target”(Hoffman 2006).

1

It is this fear that makes the millions scared of the

few and has been unrelenting in the United States since 9/11. Could education about

terrorism succeed where other counterterrorism policies have failed?

From 2001 to 2020, nearly half of Americans were very or somewhat worried that

they or someone in their family would become a victim of terrorism, and over 60% of

Americans worried a great deal or a fair amount about terrorist attacks against the U.S.

(Gallup 2021). American citizens and politicians from both major parties have long

identif‌ied terrorism as the biggest security threat to the United States, including almost

every Democrat and Republican nominee for president since 9/11 (Jackson 2010).

None of these f‌igures on threat assessment have varied signif‌icantly over the past two

decades, despite trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost in counterterrorism

operations.

A growing number of scholars have questioned the signif‌icance of the terrorist threat

to the U.S. (Brooks 2011). As early as 2006, John Mueller argued that “Although it

remains heretical to say so, the evidence so far suggests that fears of the omnipotent

terrorist—reminiscent of those inspired by images of the 20-foot-tall Japanese after

Pearl Harbor or the 20-foot-tall Communists at various points in the Cold War

(particularly after Sputnik)—may have been overblown, the threat presented within the

United States by Al Qaeda greatly exaggerated”(Mueller 2006). Although Mueller has

helped convince a signif‌icant number of academics, he nonetheless recently concluded

that nothing can be done with regard to the public: “There seems to be little, if anything,

policymakers can do to reduce the fear of terrorism—whether it is through shouting

from the bully pulpit or through spending trillions of dollars to protect people from the

feared hazard. If people want to be afraid, it seems, nothing will stop them”(Mueller

and Stewart 2018). Some scholars have further concluded that education levels don’t

drive perceptions of the terrorism threat, and that when it comes to exposing people to

new information about terrorism, “data do not matter”(Kearns, Betus and Lemieux

2019;Nellis and Savage 2012).

Other scholars and politicians believe that more information will indeed change

people’s perceptions, but they conclude that such exposure will increase perceptions of

the terrorist threat. Many scholars agree that information gained via media exposure

makes individuals perceive terrorism as a larger threat that requires more hawkish

counterterrorism policies (Gadarian 2010;Matthes, Schmuck and von Sikorski 2019;

Williamson, Fay and Miles-Johnson 2019). Edward Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan

further claim that it is not just the media, but rather the broader “terrorism industry”of

politicians and experts that overhype the threat of terrorism for their own ends and

effectively scare the public (Herman and O’Sullivan 1989). Soon after taking off‌ice in

2017, President Donald Trump’s administration implicitly endorsed the idea that more

information leads to increased threat perceptions by releasing a list of 78 terrorist

attacks that occurred between 2014 and 2016. When questioned about the list, White

1148 Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution 66(7-8)