Dynamic Decisions: Experimental Reactions to War, Peace, and Terrorism

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/book_chapters/zg64tm56t

Abstract

A set of psychological laboratory experiments, motivated by image theory, focuses on the dynamics of individual responses to international attacks. Results illuminate some dimensions of individual reactions to war, peace, and terrorism. Young American citizens are reluctant warriors. They respond slowly to news reports of international attacks. Without successive attacks, conflict responses decay over time. After several rounds of reported attacks, individuals generally escalate their responses but only up to the level of an attacker's conflict actions. Individual responses to international attacks vary with a number of additional influences. These include: prior knowledge and priming, types of attackers, types and locations of targets, individual personality and gender. Conflictual actions are more linear and unidimensional than cooperative ones, and there is no clear firebreak between conventional and nuclear weapons.

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