Terrorism Military Conflict and Terrorism

8/2/2019 Terrorism Military Conflict and Terrorism

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Military Conflict and Terrorism: General Psychology InformsInternational Relations

Lyle E. Bourne Jr., Alice F. Healy, and Francis A. BeerUniversity of Colorado at Boulder

Several experiments, focusing on decisions made by young, voting-age citizens of theUnited States about how to respond to incidents of international conflict, are summa-rized. Participants recommended measured reactions to an initial attack. Repeatedattacks led to escalated reaction, however, eventually matching or exceeding theconflict level of the attack itself. If a peace treaty between contending nations was inplace, women were more forgiving of an attack, and men were more aggressive. Therewas little overall difference in reactions to terrorist versus military attacks. Participantsresponded with a higher level of conflict to terrorist attacks on military than on

culturaleducational targets.

The end of the EastWest cold war and thefall of the Berlin Wall were triggers for majorpeace efforts and serious attempts to settle long-standing political disputes among nations. Oneof the most visible transitional events, of course,was the reunification of Germany, but therehave been numerous other more recent exam-ples of progress (and sometimes regress) in theMiddle East, in Northern Ireland, on the Koreanpeninsula, in India/Pakistan, and elsewhere.These developments provided a context for re-cent trends toward peaceful international rela-tions, and there was an enormous amount ofliterature produced by political scientists in aneffort to understand these trends (e.g., Tanter,1999; Volkan, 1999). But progress towardpeace has recently been derailed by the shock-ing events of September 11, 2001, and theUnited States and many of its allies are cur-rently engaged in an all-out new kind of war, a

war against terrorism.Over the 15 years before September 11, while

peace-oriented international developments were

unfolding, we conducted a series of laboratoryexperiments, paralleling real internationalevents, to examine how young citizens of theUnited States understand and react to episodesof international conflict and conflict resolution.The earliest of these studies explored militaryconflicts among nations, whereas the more re-cent studies contrasted military conflict with

terrorist attacks and then focused on terrorism,fortuitously anticipating the events of Septem-ber 11. One purpose of this work has been todetermine whether there are any tried and truegeneral psychological principles that might helpto understand why international events unfoldas they do, why political decision makers act theway they do, and how decisions made by dip-lomats might differ from those made by thegeneral public. But it should be noted that par-ticipants in these studies, thus far, have been

limited to college students. Generalizationsfrom these results to real or expert politicaldecision making are unclear, and their justifica-tion remains to be determined.

Priming and Personality in InternationalDisputes

In all of our experiments, we ask young adultcollege student participants to evaluate mostlyfictitious news reports describing aggressive

acts against the United States or against an allyof the United States by a nonaligned, opposi-tional country.

Lyle E. Bourne Jr. and Alice F. Healy, Department ofPsychology, University of Colorado at Boulder; Francis A.Beer, Department of Political Science, University of Colo-rado at Boulder.

This article is based on a Division 1 (Society for GeneralPsychology) presidential address delivered by Lyle E.Bourne Jr. at the 2001 annual convention of the AmericanPsychological Association in San Francisco.

Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-dressed to Lyle E. Bourne Jr., Department of Psychology,University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0345.E-mail: [email protected]

Review of General Psychology Copyright 2003 by the Educational Publishing Foundation2003, Vol. 7, No. 2, 189 202 1089-2680/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1089-2680.7.2.189

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Priming

Our first study was modeled on the disputebetween Great Britain and Argentina over the

Falkland (Malvinas) Islands (Beer, Healy, Sin-clair, & Bourne, 1987). The experiment beganwith a fictional scenario, read by participants,based on the then recently concluded (1982)confrontation. We asked participants to choosean appropriate reaction from a list of alterna-tives, graded in conflict level, for one fictitiouscountry, called Afslandia, to take in response toan action taken by another fictitious country,Bagumba, over some disputed territory. Thesame request was repeated over several roundsof action and reaction between the two contend-ing countries.

The main focus of this study was on theeffects of priming: priming by texts read bysome participants before any action decisions.One group of participants read a brief but com-pelling description of events leading up toWorld War II, focusing on the policy of West-ern statesmen in dealing with Germanys inva-sion of Czechoslovakia. The clear point of thestory was that, when a country engages in war-like aggression against another country, escala-

tion of conflict is inevitable and diplomatic ef-forts after peace are futile. Appeasement canonly lead to wider, longer disputes. This de-scription was written in a way so as to prime aconflictual, stand-up-for-your-rights attitude inreaders. Another group read a description of thematerial and human costs of international con-flict. The horrors of trench warfare duringWorld War I, the suffering of military personnelon both sides, and the latent effects of thisexperience on the postwar morale and econo-mies of contending countries were vividly de-scribed. This narrative was intended to primecooperative, pacifist, nonconflictual responses.The remaining participants were given no prim-ing text before they read the conflict scenario.Our theory was that any text about internationalinteraction might call to the readers mind oneor more general schemas representing relevantor analogous previous experiences or knowl-edge. On the basis of what we know aboutpriming, then, we expected that the first vignettewould prime participants to adopt an aggressive

attitude toward the contemporary conflict andthat the second vignette would have the oppo-site effect.

Individual Differences in Personality

After we completed this study, reports beganto appear supporting a role for individual per-

sonality variables in real-life political decisionmaking. Satterfield and Seligman (1994), forexample, suggested that it might be possible topredict high-level international decisions fromthe personal explanatory styles of political de-cision makers. They derived a measure of ex-planatory style for George Bush and SaddamHussein, based on content analysis of publicstatements made by these two national leadersat various points in time during the Gulf War.Statements were scored on the dimensions ofinternality externality of event control, stabil-ityinstability of event causes over time, andglobalityspecificity of event effects. Fromthese scores, Satterfield and Seligman computeda composite measure of explanatory or attribu-tional style for each leader. This compositemeasure was highly and reliably predictive ofthe level of aggression and degree of risk takingrepresented in the subsequent decisions and ac-tions of Bush and Hussein. Interestingly, thecorrelations were higher for Bush, suggesting agreater reliance in his case on personal convic-

tion as opposed to rational decision. A similarinterest in individual differences also led us tomeasure, among our participants, certain per-sonality traits (using the 16 PF; Institute forPersonality and Ability Testing, 1979) that wethought might be related to political decisionmaking regarding international disputes.

Experimental Results

We found that, relative to the no-priming

control, both of the war-priming vignettes pro-duced significant effects on the conflict levelexpressed in our participants action responses.But these effects were not simple. Both primespotentiated high levels of aggressive reaction bythose participants who were high on the domi-nant end of the 16 PF dominantsubmissivepersonality trait. The opposite was true of sub-missive participants, those at the low end of thedominantsubmissive scale. Submissive partic-ipants responded significantly more weakly thancontrols to conflictual acts by the other side when

primed by either war-related vignette, as shown inFigure 1. These findings imply that the specificcontent of the priming vignette is less important

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than simply reminding participants about pastwars. It seems that any war-related vignette willactivate underlying personality predispositionsthat enhance or inhibit aggressive military decisions.

Results of the first experiment indicated that,at least for young American citizens, peacewardecisions are not necessarily undertaken on thebasis of rational calculation of benefits andcosts, although rational choice is surely a majorpart of real or elite political decision making.We suggest that decisions, especially those thatare made serially and at a tactical level byordinary citizens, are likely to be affected sig-nificantly by the schemas or images called tomind by the stream of events and by overallpredispositions to respond submissively ordominantly. However, even in the real world of

policy making, primes and personality mightoperate, possibly in subtle and informal ways,as signals or cues that flow through the streamof political events. Their effects might very wellhelp to explain why different major players onthe political scenelike Bush and Hussein dur-ing the Gulf War or Sharon and Arafat todayreact quite differently to the same events, eventsthat might lead to cooperation and peace ifreacted to in the same way by both sides.

The Role of Peace Treaties and of Gender

There was some suggestion in this first ex-periment that men and women react differently

to acts of international aggression, as one mightexpect intuitively. But the numbers of men andwomen were not balanced across conditions.Thus, we corrected that flaw in subsequent stud-

ies, and the results highlight not only the influ-ence of personality variations but also an ex-traordinary and unanticipated gender differencein naive political decision making. In the nextstudy, we were primarily interested in the effectthat the existence of a peace treaty might haveon an individuals expression of conflict in re-action to an international attack. One mightreasonably expect a peace treaty to minimizeconflictual interactions between nations. Themain question was, What happens if or whenthere is a transgression by one of the two partiesto the treaty?

Effects of a Peace Treaty

Participants in our next study (Beer, Sinclair,Healy, & Bourne, 1995; see also Bourne, Sin-clair, Healy, & Beer, 1996) were instructed toread through a test booklet, the first part ofwhich contained items from the 16 PF, focusingon two bipolar dimensions, radicalism conser-vativism and submissiveness dominance. Next,

participants read a background scenario de-scribing an ongoing situation of intransigentregional conflict. In this case, the scenario wasa fictionalized account of postGulf War activ-ities in the Middle East, as Israel and the Arabcountries attempted to work out a peace agree-ment. In our scenario, two neighboring coun-tries are described as being locked in a historicalstruggle of tension and hostility. Afslandia issupported by the United States, and Bagumba issupported by its fictitious superpower ally, Cal-

deron. After reading the background scenario,half of the participants read a simulated newsstory reporting the signing of a historic peaceagreement between Afslandia and Bagumba atCamp David. On the next page of the booklet,the following news flash appeared: BagumbasArtillery Opens Fire on Afslandias MilitaryOutpost Near the Border.

Participants were asked to respond to thenews flash by choosing a reaction that wouldbe best for the United States [Afslandias majorally] to support at this time in response to this

news event. Twelve illustrative reactions, rankordered in terms of level of conflict, were pre-sented below a scale of numbers, 112. For

Figure 1. Mean conflict level recommended by partici-pants in reaction to an enemy attack as a function of per-sonality dominance level and nature of priming vignette(data from Beer et al., 1987).

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example, Number 4 was The United Statessupports Afslandias Foreign Minister in post-poning a state visit to Bagumba, denouncing itsrecent hostile actions; Number 7 was The

United States supports Afslandia in miningthree of Bagumbas bridges and important in-dustrial plants; and Number 10 was TheUnited States supports Afslandia in using bat-tlefield nuclear weapons against key commandsites in Bagumba. The rank ordering and con-flict levels of the sample of reactions presentedto participants were determined in a separatenorming study, reported in detail in Beer et al.(1995). It is important to keep in mind that theseaction items were described as examples repre-

senting quantitatively the different levels ofpossible retaliation. Participants were instructedto select an action number that was appropriatein terms of its level of aggression in response tothe news flash. After their first action response,participants proceeded to the next page of thetest booklet and were informed that This newsflash has just appeared. Despite Afslandias re-sponse, Bagumbas artillery continues to fire onAfslandias military outpost near the border.Participants were asked once again to respondto the news flash by choosing one of the 12possible action alternatives that would be bestfor the United States to support at this timein response to this news event. In all, partici-pants were asked to respond a total of fivetimes to these repeated reports of aggression byBagumba.

O n a 112 scale, Bagumbas actionBa-gumbas artillery firing on Afslandias militaryoutpost near the border had a normative valueof 8, as determined in the norming study. Figure2 shows the average levels of conflict chosen by

participants in each offive rounds of reaction toBagumba, both as raw scores and as the bestfitting equation. Two points are worth noting.First, the initial reaction of participants was at alevel of conflict substantially lower than that ofthe initial act committed by Bagumba. There issomething here that might be called forgivenessor the discounting of aggression. Participantsinitial reaction to an unprovoked attack is rela-tively mild. Second, conflict level increasedgradually over rounds, but it never exceeded the

level of Bagumbas action. Participants appearto support the gradual escalation of hostility butonly to a point of approximate reciprocity.

Next, we looked at this trend over actionrounds in light of four between-groups vari-ables, namely, the existence or nonexistence of

a peace treaty, the two personality variablescreated by partitioning participants at the me-dian level of dominancesubmissiveness andradical conservative traits, and finally gender.The main effect of action round was highlysignificant but interacted with none of the fourbetween-groups variables. There was no signif-icant overall effect of peace treaty. Of the twopersonality variables, only dominancesubmis-siveness returned clear-cut results. High domi-nance participants were uniformly more con-

flictual (M

7.26) than low dominance partic-ipants (M 6.25), regardless of peace treaty,gender, or round. Conservative participantstended to be more conflictual across all actionrounds than did liberal participants, but the dif-ference was small and statistically unreliable.

Effects of Gender

What should we expect about gender? Tradi-tionally, aggression is considered to be a mas-culine trait, and thus we might expect men to be

more conflictual overall than women. But theliterature on gender differences in decisionmaking, such as it is, indicates little difference

Figure 2. Mean conflict level as a function of action round(data from Beer et al., 1995).



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between men and women over a variety ofexperimental situations. Still, there are impor-tant gender differences in many behaviors in-volving moral reasoning and interpersonal rela-

tionships (see, e.g., Eagly, 1987). According toGilligan (e.g., Gilligan, 1982) and Buss (e.g.,1994), two authors with quite different perspec-tives on the matter, under circumstances inwhich a close relationship exists, women aremore likely than men to search for ways topreserve that relationship. Women are generallymore cooperative and compassionate in inter-personal interactions than men. Men, in con-trast, seem more preoccupied with justice andwith reaction in kind. Thus, even (or perhapsespecially) when a relationship exists betweentwo people, men seem more likely than womento act defiantly in the face of any active trans-gression by the other party. Does this translateto cases in which countries rather than individ-uals are the players?

In the data of the present experiment, the twogenders showed essentially the same overalllevel of conflict in their action selections. How-ever, and this is especially noteworthy in the

light of earlier remarks about the differential

importance of relationships to men and women,the presence of a peace treaty affected the two

genders in diametrically opposed ways. As

shown in Figure 3, there was a large and sig-nificant crossover interaction in action choicesbetween gender and peace treaty. Men made

more conflictual action choices in the presenceof a peace treaty than in the absence of a peacetreaty. Women, in contrast, made weaker con-

flictual action choices in the presence of a peacetreaty than in its absence. Personality differ-ences in the action choice data were statistically

controlled by a linear regression analysis, so

this effect is not attributable to a difference in

dominancesubmissiveness between the gen-ders. Thus, the absence of an overall peace

treaty or an overall gender effect in action

choices is highly misleading. Peace agreementsdo have consequences and gender matters, but

the effects are revealed only when the two vari-

ables are considered together. Especially whena relationship, signified by a peace agreement,exists between the two sides, men seem more

Figure 3. Mean conflict level as a function of gender and peace treaty condition (data fromBeer et al., 1995).



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likely than women to act defiantly in the face ofany active transgression.

Generality of Interaction Between Peace

Treaty and Gender

How stable are these results? Given the po-tential importance of a Peace Treaty Genderinteraction, we thought that it was necessary toreplicate this finding. A replication also gave usthe opportunity to extend the scope of the earlierstudies, by including other acts of aggression asprompts or primes, in an effort to determine thegenerality of forgiveness, escalation, and reci-procity effects. In a follow-up study (Sinclair,Healy, Beer, & Bourne, 2002) based on thesame Afslandia versus Bagumba scenario, weused three priming events (i.e., attacks of Ba-gumba on Afslandia) differing in conflict level,one higher, one lower, and one at the same levelof conflict as in the preceding study. Personalitymeasurements were taken as before, and partic-ipants were asked, after reading their prime, torespond in five action rounds. Our expectationswere that participants would discount Bagum-bas initial act of aggression but gradually es-calate over five rounds to a level of conflict

approximately equal to the prime, regardless ofthe level of the prime. Moreover, we expectedto find a significant Gender Treaty interactionat each prime level.

The data depicted in Figure 4 are consistentwith these expectations in that participants didexhibit some initial forgiveness of the opposi-tions attack and escalated their retaliation in theface of continuing acts of hostility. Note thatalthough participants final level of conflict ap-proximated the level of the prime for the primesof high and medium conflict levels, the finalconflict level was higher than that of the primewhen it was at a low level, suggesting a possibleboundary condition on reciprocity.

Unlike the preceding study, there was anoverall gender difference in these data, one thatcannot be removed by controlling the signifi-cant difference between men and women indominancesubmissiveness. Overall, womenwere less conflictual than men, even when dom-inance differences were factored out. Our maininterest, however, is in the Gender Treatyinteraction. As shown in Figure 5, that interac-tion was essentially the same as in the previousstudy. The interaction was not affected by anyof the other variables in this experiment and

Figure 4. Mean conflict level as a function of action round and magnitude of prompt orprime (data from Sinclair et al., 2002).



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appeared at all levels of prime, although it wasnumerically most pronounced at the midlevelprime.

Some Tentative Implications

In review, recommended responses by youngcitizens to military attacks by another nationtended to follow a pattern of reciprocity, withtwo important constraints. First, counterre-sponses tended to be initially forgiving or dis-

counted. Second, however, counterreactions es-calated over rounds, eventually approachingand sometimes exceeding the conflict level ofthe aggressors attack. These actionreactionresults might have some implications for thecontrol of intransigent conflict. They suggestthat the moves of each agent influence the coun-termoves of its opponent. Unilateral aggression,especially when it is repeated, risks expandingconflict; Saddam Hussein and the Arabs andIsraelis stand as fairly recent historical exam-ples of this principle. An interesting possibility

is that unilateral deescalation, as exemplified inthe politics of Mikhail Gorbachev, might have asimilar downward ratcheting effect. We have

not yet examined this possibility but hope to doso eventually.

In the scenario read by some participants inthe preceding experiment, Afslandia and Ba-gumba recently signed an agreement to main-tain the peace in a region that had historicallybeen rife with conflict. Naively, we expected theexistence of this treaty to mitigate Afslandiastendency to react in kind to Bagumbas hostil-ity. But there was no consistent overall differ-ence in the conflictual counterresponses of par-

ticipants operating under the existence or thenonexistence of a peace treaty. The overall ef-fect or lack thereof, however, does not tell thewhole story. Our results suggest that peace trea-ties and identical international events can havesubstantially different meanings for men andwomen. For the female decision maker, theexistence of a peace treaty between nationsmeans that efforts after conciliation should bepursued, even in the face of a transgression. Forthe male decision maker, though, it provides theoccasion for retaliation and revenge. If men are

the decision makers in an unstable situation, it isprobably best not to have a peace treaty, espe-cially if it is tentative or preliminary to larger

Figure 5. Mean conflict level as a function of gender and peace treaty condition (data fromSinclair et al., 2002).



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negotiations. Its violation will just exacerbatethe problem. But if women are to make thesedecisions, preliminary peace treaties are to besought after because they might minimize the

level and probability of follow-up aggression.

Military Versus Terrorist Attacks

The experiments described thus far are lim-ited in obvious ways. A particularly importantlimitation is their focus on only one type ofconflict: conflict involving the military, occur-ring outside of the United States, and involvinga fictitious ally and opposing nation. In recenttimes, many real-life conflictual acts have beenexecuted by terrorist groups rather than by the

military of another nation. There existed a sub-stantial political science literature before Sep-tember 11 focusing on terrorism and its specificimplications for democracies, foreign policies,and international relations. Although the publicview of terrorism might well have changedsince September 11, this literature suggestedthat people generally think of terrorist acts asqualitatively different from and less seriousthan military engagements and of terrorists asnot necessarily representative of their nation oforigin (e.g., Crenshaw, 1986). But there areother obvious differences between terrorist andmilitary attacks. For example, political scien-tists claim that terrorism, but not military action,exceeds the bounds of socially accepted vio-lence, provoking a greater sense of moral vio-lation (Crenshaw, 1986). Further, military at-tacks are designed to overwhelm an enemy,whereas terrorist attacks are symbolic in natureand are designed primarily to influence publicopinion. There are other important differencesbetween terrorism and conventional interna-

tional disputes. The point is that citizens, asdecision makers, might be expected to responddifferently when their country or an ally is at-tacked by a terrorist group as opposed to themilitary, assuming of course attacks of equalseverity. This literature inspired us to conduct astudy comparing reactions to military and ter-rorist acts that were equated on other dimen-sions (Healy, Hoffman, Beer, & Bourne, 2002).

Differences in Reactions to Terrorist andMilitary Attacks

Most of what we know about public reactionto military versus terrorist aggression is based

on case studies or anecdotes. To collect moresystematic empirical evidence, in a series ofthree experiments (Healy et al., 2002), we askedyoung adults to respond to conflictual events

involving a terrorist group from an opposingcountry. It is critical to note that these experi-ments were completed before the events of Sep-tember 11, 2001, and the results might be dif-ferent today.

In one experiment, for half of the partici-pants, a fictional attacking country, Bagumba,was said to have a peace treaty with a fictionalally of the United States, Afslandia. There wasno peace treaty between Bagumba and Afs-landia for the other half of the participants. For

half of the participants in each of these groups,Bagumbas military attacks Afslandia, whereas,for the remaining participants, Afslandia is at-tacked by a state-sponsored terrorist groupbased in Bagumba. Military and terrorist attackswere described essentially in the same way, soany differences in the participants responses tothe attacks could not be attributed to differencesnormally confounded with this comparison.

The question put to participants was, in ef-fect: How should Afslandia respond to theseattacks? We were interested in any evidencethat citizens might be more willing to forgiveterrorist attacks than military attacks. As usual,participants increased their level of conflict inthe face of repeated rounds of attacks of eithertype, military or terrorist. But there was animportant interaction between round and type ofattack. Despite the similarity in the descriptionsof the military and terrorist attacks, participantsresponded initially with a greater level of con-flict to military than to terrorist attacks. Even-tually, however, with repeated attacks, the level

of conflictual response to terrorist actions sur-passed the level of response to military attacksso that, in the final rounds of this experiment,the level of reaction was greater to terroristattacks than to military ones (see Figure 6).Presumably, participants view the initial terror-ist act as an isolated event not worthy of strongretaliation but revise this view after repeatedinstances of terrorism. The repeated, temporallyand geographically separated incidents of ter-rorism that occurred on September 11 might

well have provoked a similar incremental reac-tion, although presently there are no data avail-able to confirm or deny this possibility.



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The Democratic Peace Hypothesis

The results of the preceding experiment ledus to focus in subsequent studies on terroristattacks taking place in different political andgeographical contexts. One political contextthat has been the target of a substantial body ofrecent literature in international relations is the

form of government (or regime) of contendingnations (see, e.g., Cederman, 2001, and Hender-son, 2002, for recent discussions of this issue).A democratic peace hypothesis formulated byRussett (1993) implies that nations with a dem-ocratic form of government do not go to waragainst other democratic countries. A weakerversion of this hypothesis is that democraticnations tend not to support attacks of any kindon each other (Maoz, 1997). Both versions arebased on the arguments that (a) alternative dip-

lomatic mechanisms for settling disputes areavailable to democracies and (b) shared culturalvalues mitigate conflict. On the basis of thishypothesis, one might expect that participants,who in our experiment are young citizens of ademocracy, will respond less conflictually to anattack on the United States (or an ally) by an-other democratic nation than by a nondemo-cratic nation. But we have proposed an exten-sion of this hypothesis based on the idea thatparticipants are likely to treat two contendingdemocratic countries as though they had an

implicit peace treaty. If this is a reasonableassumption, then, on the basis of earlier find-ings, we would predict that female participants

will forgive and respond less forcefully to anattack by a democratic nation relative to one bya nondemocratic nation. Male participants, incontrast, will retaliate more vigorously to an

attack by a democratic nation than to an attackby a nondemocratic nation.

The background scenario presented to partic-ipants at the outset of the next experiment de-scribed the country of Calderon, a superpowernation that often opposed the United States. Fordifferent participants, Calderon was said to haveeither a democratic or a nondemocratic govern-ment. According to the democratic peace hy-pothesis of Russett (1993), we would predictthat reactions by our participants to any kind ofattack by Calderon on the United States mightbe weaker if Calderon is a democracy than if itis a nondemocracy. But, on the assumption thatthere is an implicit peace treaty among demo-cratic nations, Calderons form of government(democratic or nondemocratic) might have aneffect similar to the peace treaty variable, re-sulting in an interaction between gender andform of government.

Even though the United States has not beeninvolved in any military conflict within its bor-ders in modern times, it has suffered a number

of serious terrorist attacks. In some cases, theattack has occurred within the United States(e.g., the attacks of September 11 on the WorldTrade Center in New York City and the Penta-gon in Washington, D.C.). Other terrorist activ-ities involving United States citizens or prop-erty have occurred within allied nations (e.g.,the bombing of the United States embassies inEast Africa or the more recent bombing of theUSS Cole in Yemen). We were concerned in thepresent study with determining whether there is

a difference in reaction to a terrorist attack ondomestic versus foreign soil. Participants wereasked to respond over successive rounds to aterrorist act perpetrated on U.S. citizens in fivedifferent venuesan office building housingthe Coca Cola Company, a military barracks, auniversity campus, a cafe, and a tour buslocated either inside or outside of the UnitedStates.

There was no overall difference in level ofconflictual response attributable either to loca-tion of attack, inside or outside the United

States, or to form of government of the attack-ing country. The latter result is, of course, in-consistent with predictions based on the demo-

Figure 6. Mean conflict level as a function of action roundand type of attack, terrorist or military (data from Healy et

al., 2002).



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cratic peace hypothesis (Russett, 1993). Partic-ipants responses did increase in conflict overrounds, as in previous experiments, althoughthe venue and nature of the attack varied over

rounds in the present experiment. As shown inFigure 7, this escalation effect depended on thecombination of the gender of the participant andwhether or not the attack was made by a dem-ocratic country. During the last two rounds, menresponded with more conflict to an attack by ademocratic adversary than to an attack by anondemocratic adversary, whereas women re-sponded with more conflict to an attack by anondemocratic adversary than to an attack by ademocratic adversary. This outcome is in ac-cord with predictions based on our extension ofthe democratic peace hypothesis and on an anal-ogy between the relationship among democra-cies and the existence of an implicit peacetreaty.

Although the sample of target sites was lim-ited in this experiment, the general pattern ofreactions observed suggested that the degree ofretaliatory conflict recommended by citizensdepended on where the attack took place. Citi-zens seemed to respond differently and moreintensely to terrorist attacks occurring at a mil-

itary base (such as in the bombing of the UnitedStates military barracks in Beirut) than in anonmilitary setting (as in the tour bus bombing

in Egypt or the school bus bombing in Israel),possibly because an attack on the military is amore warlike act than an attack in a civiliansetting. This possibility was explored more

thoroughly in the next experiment.

Targets of Terrorist Attacks

In a final study, we varied systematically thesite of the terrorist acts, distinguishing betweenclearly military and clearly cultural educa-tional sites. The offending country, Calderon,was described as democratic for half of theparticipants and as nondemocratic for the re-maining participants. The nature of the terroristact varied over six rounds, in this case all withinthe United States. For three rounds the targetwas military (a naval ship, an air force base, ora military barracks) and for the remainingrounds it was cultural educational (a library, anart museum, or a university campus).

Target site had a major impact on partici-pants level of retaliation against a terrorist at-tack. Specifically, and possibly counterintu-itively, participants responded with a signifi-cantly higher level of conflict overall to attackson military targets than to attacks on cultural

educational targets. This outcome was expectedgiven the results of the previous experiment andmight be attributed to the fact that attacks by

Figure 7. Mean conflict level as a function of action round, gender, and form of governmentof the attacking nation (data from Healy et al., 2002).



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one country on the military establishment ofanother have historically led to escalation ofconflict and eventually to states of war. Attackson nonmilitary targets, in contrast, are often (or

at least sometimes) discounted by the targetcountry. Once again, it is possible that theevents of September 11 have changed publicopinion in this regard. In general, the results ofthis study, like the previous study, were incon-sistent with predictions from the democraticpeace hypothesis in that there was no maineffect of type of government of the terrorist-supporting country for either men or women.However, in the last round of the experiment,women responded with a somewhat higher levelof conflict in the face of an attack by a nonde-mocracy than a democracy. Men, in contrast,showed the opposite pattern, responding with asomewhat higher level of conflict in the face ofan attack by a democracy than in the face of anattack by a nondemocracy during the last round.Thus, the Gender Form of Government in-teraction was evident numerically once again,as depicted in Figure 8, but, as in the lastexperiment, only after participants had experi-enced some number of previous aggressiveepisodes.

A division of participants in each counterbal-ancing group in this experiment into those rel-atively high and those relatively low on thesubmissive dominant scale of the 16 PF

yielded a significant interaction between per-sonality group and round. This interaction re-flects the fact that the more dominant partici-pants responded with a higher level of conflictthan did the more submissive participants,showing greater escalation of retaliation; how-ever, as with form of government, gender, andcertain other variables, the effect was evidentonly in the later rounds, as shown in Figure 9.

General Conclusions

We undertook these simple experiments asstudies of the influence of media reports onpublic opinion regarding international disputesand terrorism. As such, they might or might notcontain a larger message for international poli-cymakers. After an overview of what thesestudies demonstrate, we briefly consider thequestion of generality and of possible implica-tions for a deeper understanding of internationalrelations. First, there are systematic actionre-action effects in simulated situations of interna-

Figure 8. Mean conflict level in Action Round 6 as a function of gender and form ofgovernment of the attacking nation (data from Healy et al., 2002).



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tional crisis and tension. College students,young voting-age citizens of this country, rec-ommend measured reactions to reports of ag-gressive attacks by another country, either ter-

rorist or conventional military attacks, dis-counted and tempered initially by forgiveness.But they become less tolerant if attacks persist,even when the target of attack changes acrossrounds. This pattern of forgiveness followed byescalation was enhanced for terrorist acts rela-tive to military acts. Participants responded toterrorist acts less conflictually than to militaryattacks at the outset but more conflictually in thelater rounds. Thus, to justify a strong and com-mensurate response to an opposing country, re-

peated acts of either state-sponsored terrorismor military action appear to be necessary. Oncerespondents have overcome their initial reluc-tance, however, they react even more stronglyto terrorism than to a military attack. Note fur-ther that the specific target of a terrorist act hasa significant effect on intensity of reaction. Per-haps counterintuitively, participants in our ex-periments responded with more overall conflictto terrorist attacks on military targets than toattacks on cultural educational targets.

But these overall effects do not tell the com-

plete story. There are major individual-differ-ences variables operating in our experiments.Dominant individuals are more aggressive in

their responses to an attack, especially whenfirst primed by reminders of previous wars;submissive individuals are less aggressive withwar priming. Moreover, identical international

events appear to have substantially differentmeanings to men and women. With a peacetreaty in place between nations, men, faced withreports of transgression, recommend strong re-taliation. Under similar circumstances, womenmoderate their response relative to a no peacetreaty condition.1 Further, along the same lines,gender of decision maker interacted with formof government of a terrorist-sponsoring nation.Participants appeared to interpret a shared formof government (democracy) as tantamount to an

implicit peace treaty. By virtue of their commondemocratic form of government, two countriesin dispute have ready-made formal diplomatic(i.e., nonconflictual) mechanisms for resolvingtheir differences. But again, women appear tointerpret these preexisting contractual relation-ships among nations differently than men. And

1 In an informal seminar discussion of this effect, a stu-dent reported on a magazine interview with Virginia Woolf,published in the 1930s, that he had recently come across.

Apparently, when asked what she would do to preserveworld peace at that time of growing unrest in Europe, Woolfsaid, Put women in charge. This answer, although simpleand possibly naive, parallels some of our findings.

Figure 9. Mean conflict level as a function of action round and personality dominance level(data from Healy et al., 2002).



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for that reason, women ultimately respond withless conflict in the face of an attack by a dem-ocratic country (with an implicit peace treaty)than by a nondemocratic country. Men, on the

other hand, retaliate against contractual viola-tion, ultimately responding with greater conflictto an attack by a democratic country than one bya nondemocratic country.

It is important to note that these interactiveeffects of gender and form of government wereevident only in the later rounds of internationaldispute. There seems to be a general principlethat certain variables exert their influence onlyafter participants have had some amount of ex-posure to a conflictual international climate.Some conflictual acts may initially be ignored,excused, or forgiven, minimizing the impact ofrelatively subtle political variables (e.g., form ofgovernment) and individual-differences vari-ables (e.g., gender). However, after repeatedassaults, these variables become overriding andsignificantly influence the level of counterat-tack. The situation is similar for certain person-ality variables. More dominant participants re-sponded with a higher level of conflict than didmore submissive participants, but mostly in thelater rounds or after being primed by war

vignettes.Thus, reactions to international disputes and

attacks of one country on another change overtime. Individual decision makers start out in aforgiving mode, such that some critical vari-ables have little effect on their decision behav-ior initially. But as conflict and reaction to con-flict escalate, these variables begin to manifestthemselves. Thus, one possible bottom-line les-son from this research for policymakers whowish to take account of public opinion is that

initial public reactions are likely to be quitedifferent from subsequent reactions in the faceof a continuing conflict. The current ArabIs-raeli dispute is a poignant example.

One final comment is in order. The interna-tional system in which we live brings with itorder and disorder, peaceful agreements andviolent disturbances. Peace treaties, even tenta-tive or preliminary ones, as for example in theMiddle East or Northern Ireland, are usuallyseen as evidence of progress into a new age.But, as the world has often experienced, treaty

violations can amplify conflict. The desirabilityof treaty agreements in real-life internationalrelations might depend, as it does in our artifi-

cial laboratory situation, on the gender and per-sonality of individuals in power. Although weare aware of the limits on psychological exper-iments, it might not be unreasonable to try out

some of these laboratory-based principles in thereal world. Even if there are fewer women thanmen or fewer submissive than dominant person-alities active in todays international arena, pol-iticians and diplomats might be well advised totake account of the facts of general psychologyand of the psychology of individual differences.General psychology actually might have some-thing to contribute to further peaceful progressin the current fragile post cold war, terrorism-threatened international environment. In inter-national relations, as elsewhere, general psy-chological variables involving memory, person-ality, and gender probably make a biggerdifference than they are typically given creditfor.

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Received February 17, 2002

Revision received May 15, 2002

Accepted July 15, 2002


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