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Psychology of Terror
Err Travel · October 31, 2001

Prior to this year, the most significant public event of my life was the assassination of President John Kennedy. All my contemporaries feel the same.

That event has now been overshadowed by an even more invidious public event. And again, my contemporaries feel the same.

Just as we all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we first heard the news from Dallas on November 22, 1963, we can never erase those same where-we-were-and-what-we-were-doing landmarks of our lives as we learned of the events in New York and in Washington on September 11, 2001. Events of this magnitude place an unforgettable bookmark on our consciences.

There is no way to overstate the abhorrence that we feel, but we must keep these events in perspective to save ourselves from the fear that they are meant to provoke. Events of this enormity skew our perceptions of reality, and that is exactly the psychological effect that terrorists seek from their infamous acts. We can, however, deny these miscreants their objective by understanding how they hope to use the psychology of terrorism against us.

The terror that terrorists aim for is accomplished through acts that result in mass loss of life with concurrent disruption of infrastructural, governmental, and societal functions. Abetting the terrorists in their goal of fear are psychological phenomena called "perceptual biases" that cause us to exaggerate the gravity of the consequences of the acts. The two perceptual biases that are probably most salient to the tragedy of September 11 are the population bias and the personalization bias.

When a negative consequence befalls a group of people all at once, it is perceived as worse than if it happened to the same people individually. This phenomenon is called the population bias and is what colors our perception of air travel today. While the death of any air traveler is a tragedy, the toll of victims from the crashed airliners on September 11 is far from the worst air disaster to have been recorded. In 1977, for instance, an accident between Pan Am and KLM jumbo jets in Tenerife on the Canary Islands took the lives of 578 passengers and crew. However, by connecting the murders of the passengers and crew aboard the four airliners on September 11 to the victims in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the death of the airline passengers seems even more tragic. Certainly, this nearly simultaneously murder of 5000 people would qualify as evoking a population bias.

But the fact is this: 266 people were killed on the hijacked airliners, a relatively small portion of the 20,000 to 25,000 people murdered in the United States in a typical year.

Another phenomenon at work is the personalization bias. This is where people tend to exaggerate the probability of a rare event if that event has been experienced. The terrorist attack was indeed-and thankfully-a rare event, and although most of us were thousands of miles away from New York, we "experienced" that attack via radio and television. It was indeed as though we were there. By vicariously being a part of the attacks, we tend to believe that these kinds of events are more likely to be repeated than is likely the case.

But the fact is this: With stepped-up aviation security in general and particularly with airline passengers being more aware of the increased responsibility they have for their own safety while flying, the probability of a successful hijacking has been lessened.

Other psychological phenomena apply as well, but these two biases, especially, are at work on our perceptions. By understanding their effects, I hope to lessen the anxiety and fear that the terrorists hoped to instill in us. In no way is my intention here to diminish the despicableness of the acts perpetrated, nor the sorrowful resultant loss of life caused by the terrorist attacks of September 11.

However, we must keep this tragedy in perspective and not let it-or those who desire to benefit from it-keep us from living our lives.

Dr. Terry Riley is a psychologist and travel security authority. He is author of the popular book Travel Can Be Murder. Visit his site at http://www.appliedpsychology.com or e-mail him at terry@ticked.com.