fw: Zimbardo on terrorist alarms

[claudia westermann]

http://www.zimbardo.com/
(Philip G. Zimbardo is professor for Psychology at Stanford University)

The Political Psychology of Terrorist Alarms
Philip G. Zimbardo, Ph. D.
(3 01 03)
On April 18, 1775, patriot Paul Revere rode his horse on the famous 
"midnight ride" from Boston harbor toward Lexington, warning local 
colonial leaders along the way that the British army, the Redcoats, 
were coming. He urged them to take up arms to oppose their tyrannical 
rule. When the British arrived the next day, they were defeated at 
Concord by the colonial militia, and America's Revolutionary War had 
its auspicious beginning. Revere's warning was effective for four 
reasons: 1) he was known to be a highly credible communicator, both 
expert and trustworthy; 2) his alarm was focused on a specific 
anticipated event; 3) it was designed to motivate citizens to act, 
and 4) it called for a concrete set of actions. This Paul Revere 
paradigm for successful dissemination of public alarms is supported 
by contemporary psychological research. To be optimally effective, 
such alarms should arouse only a moderate level of motivation -- too 
low doesn't energize action, and too high creates emotional overload 
and competing, distracting behaviors. The alarms must be based on 
reliable evidence, and presented clearly by trustworthy sources about 
specific dangers or threats that may be dealt with by taking some 
recommended action. If the threat is likely to persist over an 
extended time period, debriefing after an alarm is essential to 
correct misinformation, modify faulty recommendations, and to 
reinforce citizens for heeding the message and to reassure them of 
the value of their collaborative efforts. Finally, if the threat does 
not materialize, a reputable authority must provide some explanation 
of why, and then also lower or remove the threat alert.
Violations of Effective Alarm Principles
All of these basic, rather obvious, principles have been 
systematically violated in the design and delivery of the first six 
terrorist alarms issued by government officials to warn the public of 
imminent terrorist dangers. Different communicators were alleged to 
have reliable information from "credible" sources about an imminent 
attack by terrorists somewhere, some time soon, in the United States, 
or anywhere in the world against its offices or agencies. These 
alarms worked to create high levels of citizen fear, which over time 
morphed into generalized anxiety. There was no concrete action that 
citizens might take, other than to remain on alert and to keep their 
eyes open. The initial message, whether emanating from the Attorney 
General or other authorities, got replayed endlessly by different 
media sources and elaborated by various "expert" commentators. The 
psychological situation worsened when cognitive-emotional dissonance 
was induced by the administration's collateral message to "go about 
your business as normal." How is that possible after having declared 
the nation is under potential terrorist threat and our personal 
safety and security is about to be violated once again as it was on 
9/11? The resulting sense of confusion spills over into feelings of 
helplessness and results in less than optimal information processing 
that would be essential to cope with terrorist attacks. It was never 
clear why the government had to warn the general public and not just 
relevant security forces at local and national levels since given 
that there was nothing
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meaningful we could do other than to become open-eyed worriers.
But then there were none! Not a single terrorist attack on American 
soil for the past 17 months since September 11th. Where are the 
alleged thousands of terrorists inhabiting cells in our country? And 
where was the debriefing by our authorities to explain why nothing 
happened? It was nowhere in sight or sound. The high alert and its 
high anxiety induction just silently evaporated until another month 
or two, when the next call to alarm was sounded again, and again. We 
know from the classic story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf that after only 
three false alarms, people cease to take seriously the validity of 
previously credible messengers. After six no-consequence alarms, many 
Americans became desensitized to the need to be on high alert -- yet 
still lead normal lives. But for some, it became "normal" to be 
anxiously dreading the worst, given the lesson of the first horrific 
attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
That prolonged state of worry about one's vulnerability without any 
clear action to alter it, can have a profoundly negative impact on 
our individual and collective mental health. I call it a 
"pre-traumatic stress syndrome." It is likely that the failure even 
to debrief the nation after these false alarms was based on an 
inadequate public warning model that did not take into sufficient 
account their psychological impact. It may be that government 
officials felt no need for corrective information because they had 
already reminded the public not to worry and lead normal lives. 
Better safe than sorry, better we warned you and nothing happened 
than we did not, and something happened -- was the apparent 
reasoning. Or maybe, they realized they were wrong in their estimates 
and did not want to go public with that admission. Or, a more 
provocative hypothesis is that maybe they just preferred that the 
public remain eternally vigilant despite the psychic toll.
And Then There Were Seven
Something unusual must have happened between the last of the unmarked 
six-pack of terrorist warnings and the recent brightly 
Orange-colored, newly-framed Seventh Alarm that seemed at first to 
fit the psychologically effective Revere paradigm. It was presented 
clearly by one communicator, Tom Ridge, Head of Homeland Security, 
and it amplified the reliability of his source by indicating it was 
detected from multiple intelligence sources. It identified the 
terrorist targets as "soft" -- American homes and hotels - which 
targets everybody. In the next days, the target list expanded to 
include airlines, symbolic and strategic venues. The anticipated 
terrorist weapons escalated to the unthinkable; "weapons of mass 
destruction" -- chemical, biological, and radiological "dirty bombs." 
With that much detail on the input side, then the Homeland Security 
Head added a shopping list of concrete actions Americans should take 
on the output side to be prepared for this all-out attack from any of 
the reported thousand terrorists operating on American soil and 
preparing to use these weapons of mass destruction against innocent 
civilians.
Experts warned us over and over, on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and other 
networks, to gas up our cars in case of immediate evacuation (and 
then the east coast was snowbound for days), store emergency supplies 
(as when preparing for natural disasters), and seal ourselves in our 
homes using plastic sheeting and duct tape. At last, we had a set of 
concrete actions we could take which seemed better than just sitting 
idly waiting for the inevitable. To make sure this message got on the 
nation's psyche radar, after the mind-
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dulling previous six false alarms, the Orange Alert was sounded and 
local, state and federal forces swung into defensive actions. Near 
panic buying of the recommended supplies followed in many cities. 
Amazingly, the collateral second message was once again sounded -- 
about living our lives as usual, going about our business as normal, 
when anticipating that a panoply of weapons of mass destruction were 
about to implode our homes!
But then it all began to unravel, as experts said we could suffocate 
by sealing off ventilation into our homes, and others said some of 
the "reliable" sources were hoaxes. Nevertheless, the Orange Alert 
remained in effect for weeks while the Head of Homeland Security 
began a nationwide campaign to promote emergency preparedness, 
fashioned after the programs of FEMA for natural disaster readiness, 
and supported by focus-group recommendations (obviously not the same 
"focus groups" dismissed by the President in his disdain of 
world-wide, massive anti-war protests). However, it should be 
apparent that natural disasters and disasters caused by human agents 
require very different models of response, since God and the 
impartial laws of nature are generally credited with nature gone 
awry, while the Devil's evil doing is behind human nature's 
malevolence.
The Psychology of Terrorism
Terrorism is not about war in any traditional sense of destroying the 
material resources of an enemy nation and taking over their country. 
Terrorism is about psychology. It is about taking strategic actions 
that incite terror and fright in civilian populations. Terrorism is 
about making ordinary people feel vulnerable, anxious, confused, 
uncertain and helpless. Ultimately, when terrorism works, citizens 
feel hopeless and lose trust in their leaders to guarantee the 
fundamentals of existence -- safety and security. Terrorism is about 
imagining the monster under our beds or lurking in dark closets -- 
the faceless, omnipotent enemy who might be the friendly candy man, 
our neighbor, or some horrible creature of our imagination. It has no 
one place, time, space or face. The power of terrorism lies precisely 
in its pervasive ambiguity, in its invasion of our minds.
Reactions to feeling personally vulnerable vary considerably from 
stimulating phobias, to triggering unresolved childhood conflicts, to 
prolonged stress reactions, to blindly obeying powerful leaders, and 
to intense feelings of anger. Anger is one form of displaced emotion 
that arises from feeling helpless or vulnerable. It is a turning out 
of intense and concealed feelings of weakness. Prejudice against 
out-groups is one consequence of such strong negative emotions, as is 
an increased readiness to attack "safe" targets, such as marginalized 
peoples in our nation, or even family members. Human nature, or at 
least traditional male human nature, seems to abhor feelings of 
personal weakness and uncertainty, seeking instead to ally one's 
identity to those manifesting strength with conviction. In those 
times, people want to support leaders who are bold, decisive, 
single-minded, even arrogant men of action. They want our leaders to 
identify "the enemy" for them, to give it a name, a face and a 
location so that they can channel their collective hatred and unleash 
the strength of the military on a readily winnable war against that 
evil, though weak, enemy. Many Americans are then willing to accept 
that identifiable figure as proxy for the elusive, virtual terrorist 
enemy - or their leader, who ran and hid although trapped in a cave 
in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, to continue
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haunting us. And Saddam Hussein is the perfect candidate, right out 
of central casting, to play the villain's role in this Orwellian 
drama of war and the clash of cultures.
False Alarms Do the Terrorists' Work
I wrote an essay after the third false alarm (S. F. Chronicle, Nov. 
4, 2001) expressing concern that our mismanaged alarm procedures were 
doing the terrorists' work for them. These alarms were alarming us 
well beyond a realistic nation-wide risk level of any new terrorist 
attacks, and they were forcing the government to spend billions of 
dollars in combating these incipient threats. One possibility to 
consider is that seeing the frenzy created by the first alarms, 
terrorists intentionally put out misinformation on channels they 
assume are being monitored by U. S. intelligence. As comic Lenny 
Bruce might have said, the terrorists threw a lot of shit all over 
the place and we thought it was bad shit when it was just shit-shit. 
That "chatter," detected by our intelligence services, stirred up the 
desired national turmoil and wasted a lot of money in heightened 
security -- without terrorists having to engage in any suicidal 
attacks.
Another conjecture concerns the unintended consequences of these many 
false alarms, and perhaps some intended ones. Given the void of 
terrorist attacks in our country after 9/11, compared to the great 
many in Israel for example, these alarms have worked to sustain a 
heightened sense of anxiety and confusion for more than a year. They 
reinforce a public willingness to spend huge sums on military defense 
spending and homeland security. The alarms also create a climate of 
hostility and danger that encourage moral disengagement in accepting 
restrictions on personal freedoms, and ignoring human rights 
violations from the "Patriot's Act," or mistreatment of civilian 
prisoners in our Cuban prison at Guantanamo Bay (whose interrogators 
are using torture and creating adverse conditions that may have 
contributed to the suicides and many suicide attempts among these 
Arab "enemy combatants").
Cynicism Conjures Conspiracy Conclusions
The content and timing of the seventh alarm raises cynical 
conjectures about the intentional manipulation of the psyche of the 
American public by the Bush Administration. First consider its 
proximal timing with accusations made by the Secretary of State at 
the United Nations just a day or two earlier. One justification to 
invade Iraq posited links with terrorism, asserting that Saddam 
Hussein would supply weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda and 
other terrorist groups to use against the United States. Once that 
link is accepted, it is reasonable to deduce that by deposing that 
dictator and his piece of the Axis of Evil, we are helping to win the 
war against terrorism. Despite the fact that in a taped speech the 
next day, Osama bin Laden denounced Hussein as a "socialist infidel 
leader," the Administration focused on his call to arms of Iraqi 
Muslims if the United States invades their nation.
The Iraq-Terrorist connection is one critical lynch pin in the 
justification to fight the good war against terrorists by invading 
Iraq to cut off its supply of weapons of mass destruction. The 
Seventh Alarm, by explicitly raising the specter of terrorists using 
WMD against us, served as the ultimate rationale to the American 
public for the invasion of Iraq. It countered the validity of the 
massive anti-war demonstrations in the United States
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and around the world as irrelevant to the imminent threats to 
national security posed by terrorists armed with these death-dealing 
weapons sold or given to them by Saddam Hussein. The majority of 
American citizens somehow continue to believe that Saddam Hussein was 
partly responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11, despite 
the absence of any supporting information. That is enough to fuel 
fires of revenge against him, but adding this new danger of his 
alleged continuing terrorist alliances is sufficient to call for 
deposing the evil dictator, Saddam Hussein, by all means-including 
the all-out war against Iraq, certain to erupt very soon, and certain 
to kill untold number of innocent citizens there.
Now several weeks after the Feb. 7th Seventh Alarm, the Attorney 
General rejected the suggestion of the Head of Homeland Security to 
lower the Orange high alert because of alleged new terrorist 
information from yet again "credible sources." Thus the American 
public is to be maintained on its high level of anxiety, sustaining 
its pre-traumatic stress syndrome, so that we keep in mind the image 
of Saddam, our collective enemy, whose face we know all too well. We 
invade Iraq, kill Saddam, put our military general in charge of that 
Arab nation, and Americans can sleep in peace with that threat to our 
national security eliminated-or so their story goes.
But terrorists remain faceless, elusive, still able to 'run and 
hide,' and to commit their unspeakable horrors in the absence of 
Saddam. But what if we do not find him in Iraq, and what if we do not 
uncover his cache of weapons of mass destruction, which he likely 
shipped to a sympathetic neighboring country? Then how will the 
administration justify the deaths of Iraqi citizens and American 
soldiers? And is it more or less likely that terrorist attacks will 
occur in retaliation against America for its invasion and colonial 
occupation of an Arab nation?
It is important to note that the leader of Hamas has warned that any 
invasion of Iraq by the United States will provoke immediate attacks 
by his group against Americans there and elsewhere. President Bush's 
grand vision of creating peace in the entire Middle East region by 
deposing Iraq's leadership will prove to be a nearsighted, simplistic 
and biased view. Having apparently given up on trying to broker peace 
between Israel and the Palestinians, how can we reasonably hope to 
create a climate of peace in this far-flung region with so many 
antagonists with disparate interests, needs and cultural values? 
Imagine our country in the role of peacemaker after having 
orchestrated an aggressive invasion of a nation that did not want to 
go to war against us in the first place, and after having killed 
innocent civilians before installing our colonial military empire. 
Reverse roles for a moment to acknowledge the folly in this 
formulation
There are of course, many other plausible hypotheses about the causes 
and consequences of these false alarms. Even assuming no manipulative 
intent, conscious or coincidental of the kind outlined here, there 
needs to be a serious reevaluation of how to best construct such 
future alarms, guide their optimal utilization and explain to the 
public why they do not materialize when they do not. Of course, we 
are all relieved when the alarms prove false rather than true, but 
when repeated over time they may serve only to induce a psychic 
numbing, lulling us asleep and unprepared to act constructively and 
effectively when the wolf does come to our door.
Just as I came to the end of this essay, I was alerted by my local 
newspaper to review the newest emergency preparedness information on 
the website of the Department of Homeland Security, www.ready.gov. 
Some of it is indeed quite useful and it is a
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welcome addition to general emergency preparedness for the nation. 
But does it give advice about how to prevent public panic and promote 
citizen cooperation when in dangerous situations, where panic can 
kill, such as at the nightclub fires recently in Chicago and Rhode 
Island? No. Instead of preparing for probable emergency events, it 
informs the public of the easy steps to be taken in case of the worse 
case scenario - a neighborhood Nuclear Blast.
Step 1: Take cover. Step 2: Assess the situation. Step 3: Limit your 
exposure to radiation. And there are others that make as little 
practical sense in terms of what any individual can do in a nuclear 
attack, for example, "Putting some distance between you and the blast 
will also help." How do you do an assessment of the situation when 
under cover? Doesn't being under cover also fix the distance from 
blast to you? A more likely terrorist scenario than Nuclear Blasts is 
Chemical Threat. Again, as was true with the false alarm warnings, 
there are mixed, confusing actions recommended. First, "take 
immediate action to get away;" then "staying put and avoid 
uncertainty outside." Go-Stay? Which way? Clicking on 
"shelter-in-place" informs citizens to "go to an interior room with 
as few windows as possible," but before doing so, be sure to "seal 
all windows, doors and vents with plastic sheeting and duct tape"! 
(Italics added to remind us that experts said doing this could 
suffocate us to death). Fortunately, there is now an alternative 
strategy to follow. An enterprising entrepreneur has begun marketing 
"Terror Tents." This anti-terrorist device is a tent of 3 small rooms 
that when erected within one's large home supposedly protects 
citizens from chemical attacks -- for only $8,000. That is cheaper 
than the cost of 1950's family fall-out shelters and doesn't even 
require backyards for city folks. In the promotion for these "Terror 
Tents" it was noted that they were already in place at the Pentagon 
and the White House, so why not your house as well?
Action Conclusions
There are terrorists who are indeed dangerous, who hate some of what 
America stands for in their eyes, and will try to attack us in 
various ways, including suicide bombings. Security and preparedness 
are essential components in countering terrorism, but so are honesty, 
transparency and accountability of our leaders in whom we must trust. 
While we prepare to save our bodies we must not lose our minds. Our 
government is not getting the best scientific advice available on how 
to construct terror alerts, on how to educate the public in this new 
realm, on how to manage man-made disasters that require different 
models than traditional natural disasters, and on how to think like 
terrorists in selecting probable targets for attack. We need to 
reassess our full-coverage security of venues unlikely to ever be 
considered targets by terrorists, such as high school sports events, 
so as to focus limited municipal resources on higher probability 
targets of symbolic, sentimental value, Disneyland, for example, or 
with major disruptive value, such as urban subways. High levels of 
sustained stress of many citizens of all ages can have a greater 
long-term destructive impact on the nation than the consequences of 
any single terrorist attack. Emergency preparedness for any form of 
terrorist attack would benefit from a wiser appreciation of the 
mental health implications, of the essential features of the 
psychology of terrorism, and from less political involvement and 
intrigue.
SEE ADDENDA NEXT PAGE ABOUT LEARNING FROM THE PAST
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Those Who Do Not Remember The Past Are Doomed To Repeat It.
For all those who are voicing their dissent in opposing the imminent 
war against Iraq by the United States of America, it is instructive 
to learn from a voice from the past, which helped his administration 
bend the will of the public to want war.
We must not be so blindly led into this catastrophe, rather we must 
dissent, challenge, reason with, and then disobey any administration 
urging an aggressive war when their is no immediate compelling reason 
for doing -- that is our duty as patriotic Americans.
BENDING THE MASS WILL TO WANT WAR.
"Why of course the people don't want war... That is understood. But, 
after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy 
and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it 
is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a 
communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of 
the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being 
attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and 
exposing the country to danger.
It works the same in any country." -
Hermann Goering, Nazi Officer,
Statement during his Nuremberg War Crimes Trial.
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