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Psychology of Terrorism Psychology of Terrorism EDITED BY Bruce Bongar Lisa M. Brown Larry E. Beutler James N. Breckenridge Philip C. Zimbardo OXFORD USIVERSITT PRESS War Versus Justice in Response to Terrorist Attacks Competing Frames and Their Implications Clark McCauley Often lost m d~scussionof the September 11, 2001, terrorism. "On September the 11th. entmies of attacks on the World Trad? Center (WTC) 1s the freedom committed an act of war against our coun- fact that a very nmllar attack, v;lth similar moti- t~.. Our war on terror begns with a1 Qaeda. but vation and related perpetrators. occurred eight it does not end there. It m~llnot end until evey years earlier On February 16. 1993, a truck bomb terrorist group of global reach has been found. in the basement parking garage of the WTC killed stopped and defeated" (Bush, 2001) SLX.injured hundreds, and damaged property to \Vithin the rhetonc of war., however. here has [he extent of half a billion dollars. The bomb was been frequent recourse to the rhetoric of cnminal designed to topple one of the towers into the other justice. "Whether we bring our enemes to lusuce or and to bring both tolvers down. The man behind justice to our enemies, justice will be done. .\Ye thls plan, Ramzi Yousef, noted regretfully that if he wdl come together to gve law enforc?ment the had had a little more funding his design would additional toois it needs to track dorm terror here have succeeded and killed tens of thousands (Krk. at home" (Bush, 2001; White House Press Office. 2902). The U S response to this attack was police 2003). work ar.d prosecution. After tnals and convictions, The rhetonc of &stice and the rhetoric of war SLY Arab men are in U.S. prisons, and a seventh may appear complementary, as in the often- person IS still being sought. debated qualifications of 'just war.' But closer On September 11. 2001, a second attack on inspection indicates that these two kinds of rhetoric the World Trade Center brought do~bnthe Twin instantiate two very different frames f~runder- Towers and caused nearly 3.000 deat'ns. The 9/11 standing the nature of the terronst threat and the perpetrators were similar in origns and moti- appropriate response to it. In thls chapter I e-rplore vation to the 1993 perpetrators: indeed one of the inconsistent and even contradictory impllsa- the planners of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh tions of these frames, and I suggest that more em- Mohammed. is hmzi Yousef s uncle. Despite the phasis on the criminal justice frame ~iferssome similarity of the attacks, the L.S. response was important advantages for what all of us agree ulll strikingly different. Rather than crimlnal justice be an extended U.S. effort to secure itself from proceedings. the U.S. response was a war on terronst attacks War Versus Justce ~nResponse to Terrorist Attacks 5 7 -. ... AG! ~~~mingand Human Judgment certainty to nsk xihen cornpanng gains bur pre- ferred nsk to certainty when cornpanng losses -1 ~h~ ~oxeri'f framing effects has been demon- These results opeced a gold rush of studies to ': grated in txvo decades of research in psycholog leam marc about vvhen and hoxv different frames and Pcrhaps the most fanous dernon- can affect human judgment in ways that are. stration is Tversky and Kahneman's ii98i'i '.hian statistically at least. mysterious or even irrational disease problem." Several hu~dredpeople \sere (Shafir CQ Le Boeuf. 2002). One indicat~onof the randoml>-dillded inro tn-o groups, so tha: :he txvo s~plficanceof this research is that Kahneman's groups would on a\-erage be veq sirnllar. Each work on framing effects nas cited in the alvard group n-as Sj-er. a different problem. of his Nobel Pn:e in economics in 2002 The de- mcnstrated polver of framing efiecrs is the foun- problem 1. Imagine that <he United states ;s dation for ttr argument of this chapter, namel), ?"paii;~g for an outbreak of an un,~suzl.kian :hat \qar and justice may have important11 different disease. \i-hick. 15 expected to kill 6~lSpeo?le. ~mplicationsfor hon the United States responds to Tn-o aitemjtive programs tc conbat the disease terrorist threars. have beer. proposed. ;issame that the erac: saent1f.c estimates of the ronsequcncej of the prog-am5 2:s as fo:io\~5 A Framing Analysis of the Difference Program 4 !; Program .4 1s adopted 290 Between 1993 and ZOO1 people m!l be saved Program B: If Program B is adopted. there is One way to think about the resulrj of the Asian a one-third probability that 600 people nil1 be disease problem is that most people prefer a sure sa\-ed and a t1i.o-thirds probability that no one gain to a chance of larger gain (."risk averse for nlll be saved. gain') but prefer a chance of losing nothing to a L\%.~ck rks ci\o pTograrns ~:,oitld;~?u jaior? certainty of losing someth~ng("nsk seeking for TversI\.- and Kahneman (1981'1 found that loss"). This understsnding can be applied to the 726 of the group reading Problem 1 favored Pro- problem of terronsm if we assume that, after 9/11, gram A. The prospect of saving 200 111-es 1~1th terrorism was expected to kill 6011 American cixi- certainty n-as more attractive than the probability lians the follox\ing year .4.s 4jnith most applica- of a one-in-three chance of saling 6C0 lives. tions of formal models, this anall-sis escludes man!- complications: including the loss of lives-both Problem 2. The second group read the same foreip civilians and U.S. mil~ra~v-associated with jton of the thrcat of '4s1an dlsease but n-ith the war on terrorism. In defense of this exclusion, it differect program options. might be argued that US,leaders and US.citizens Program C: Ii Program C is adopted, 300 do not weigh these l~vesas heady as cililian deaths people nil1 die in the United States. Program D: [IProgram D is adop:ed. there If n-e translare 600 lives threatened by Asian 1s a one-thlrd probability that nobod>-ail1 dle d~seaseinto 600 lives threatened by terronsm, the and a two-thirds probability that 60L7 people effect of framing as gain versus framing as loss !\dl be \{ill die. as follows. Two antiterrofism programs are available: Il.liiF. ili tF,e twc programs ~?,olild!;oii ,fa\,ilr? cnminal justice and war. Presented In terms of saving urpnsingly. 7890 of the group reading Pro- lives. cnmlnal just~cepromms for certam to save blem 2 favored Program D. The prospect of 400 232 lives from terronsm, whereas war has a chance people lost for certain was worse than the prob- of saling all 600 111-es. Presented in term5 of lil-es ability of a two-in-three chance of losing 600. The lost. criminal justice gives up 400 lives for certaln. surprise value of the difference in the results for ~vhereaswar offers a chance of los~ngno li\-es to the tn.0 problems is that they offer exactly the terrorism. If we focus on saling lives and if we are same altemat~ves,except that Problem 1 is framed nsk averse for galns, \sre ail1 prefer cnminal justice to as gain (people nil1 be sal-ed) and Problem 2 is war as the response to terrorism. However, if we framed as loss (people will die). The results in- focus on lives lost and if are are risk seeking for loss, dicate that the participants in thls study preferred we \\ill preier war to criminal justice. 58 The Psychology of Terrorism One m~ghtargue abou: how the probabilltles September 13, 1993. The trial lasted 6 months, should change as we move from the Xslan dljease x:-ith the preseniation of 204 aitnesses and threat to the terronst threat, but the polnt sum\-es more than 1,000 pieces of r~idence.On hiarch 4: that framing the respoRse to terrorism in temi 1994, the jury convicted the four defendants- of sar-lng lives is Ilkeiy to fa-or cnrninal justice, hlohammed Salameh. Nidal A3ad: hlahmud n-hereas framing it ir, terms of lix-es lost is likely .qbouhallma, and Ahmad Ajaj--on all 38 counts to fa\-or n-ar. It is not difficult LO see how, im- agzlnst them. On hlay 25, 1994; a judge senter.ced mediately after 911 1. ~~7th3.17c)G deaihs fresh and each defendant to 210 years in pnson and a persona!i=ed In the tele~-~srdsuffering of relat~ves SZ5d;000 fine. and fnends of the dead. the predominant framing On Febnar). 7. 1995, authorities in Pakistar. was in terms of lives alre~dyiost and lives to be arrested Ramzi Yousef. who was then extradited lost in future terrorist attack; This rraming in turn to the United States. On November 12. 199:. far-ored n-ar as the response to the 9111 attacks. Yousef was found gcilty of masteminding the In contrast. the six deaths caused by the 1993 1993 bombing. and on January 8, 1998. he n-as at:ack on the \\TC did no: n;e out of the ever)-day sentenced to life in prison v-ithout parole. In a death toll of car accidents and hom~cides.As at- rrlated case? Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman. a bhnl tention to the 1993 dsaths n-as smali. the framing cleric who preached at mosques in Brookl!n and sf the response to terronsm \\-as 12.5 about lir-es Jersey Citi-, was sentenced to life impnsonment on lost ~ndmore about sa~ing11r-es by bringing the October 1, 1995, for conspiracy to bomb Se~i.
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