RAPID: Threat Perception on the First Anniversary of the Boston Marathon Bombings

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

On April 15, 2013, two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing 3 and injuring more than 250. This tragedy was stressful for many of those living in the Boston metropolitan area, even those not attending the Boston Marathon. Social psychological research can help us understand how experiencing this type of event can affect us; for example, do these experiences influence how we perceive and respond to our social environment? Do we see the world as more threatening after experiencing this type of event? Previous research conducted by the PI and colleagues demonstrate that in the weeks after the Boston Marathon bombing, people had an altered tendency to see threats in ambiguous situations. The current research will use the context of the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing to further examine this question; specifically, the PIs will longitudinally examine how media coverage surrounding the anniversary can change how people with low and high exposure to the initial event perceive potential threats. Participants will include people living or working in Boston at the time of the original event (high exposure group) and people not living in the area at the time of the original event (low exposure group). The study will be conducted at 3 waves: 2 months before the anniversary (Wave 1), within 1 month of the anniversary (Wave 2), and 2 months after (Wave 3) the anniversary. At each wave, participants' exposure to media coverage of the bombing will be assessed, and they will complete a threat perception task. In this task, participants view a person holding an object against a background scene for short intervals. Participants must quickly decide whether the person they see is threatening (e.g., holding a gun) or non-threatening (e.g., holding a soda can or wallet). The researchers hypothesize that those with more initial event exposure and those with more exposure to media coverage of the anniversary of the bombing will show a tendency to misidentify non-threats as threats, and decreased sensitivity to distinguishing threats from non-threats. This study will be the first to examine the effect of news coverage of real-world mass violence on changes in threat perception over time. This research will have real-world applied impacts by showing how threat perception changes before and after a terrorism event anniversary with heightened media coverage. Alterations in seeing threats, such as "seeing" a person holding a gun when they are holding a wallet, can have serious real-world implications for those working in jobs that require threat perception every day (e.g., police officers or military personnel). This work also could reveal potential detrimental real-world consequences of highly evocative media reporting of the anniversary of a terrorism event, particularly for vulnerable individuals (such as those with higher event exposure). The individual differences approach used here also will help us to identify those at highest risk for altered threat perception in the context of media attention to a prior terrorism event.