The Psychophysics of Terror Attack Casualty Counts

This study sought to characterize the “psychophysical function” relating terror attack casualty counts to the severity of the affective and cognitive reactions they elicit. We recruitedn = 684 Mechanical Turk participants to read a realistic vignette depicting either a biological or radiological terror attack, whose death toll ranged from 20 to 50,000, and rated their levels of fear and anger along with the attack's severity. Even when controlling for the perceived plausibility of the scenarios, participants ’ severity ratings of each attack were logarithmic with respect to casualty count, while ratings of fear and anger did not significantly depend on casualty count. These results were consistent across attack weapon (biological vs. radiological) and time horizon of the casualties (same‐day or anti cipated to occur over several years). These results complement past work on life loss valuation and highlight a potential bifurcation between the public's affective and cognitive evaluations of terror attacks.
Source: Risk Analysis - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Original Research Article Source Type: research