776118

research-article2018
PRQXXX10.1177/1065912918776118Political Research QuarterlyAvdan and Webb

International Relations
Political Research Quarterly

Not in My Back Yard: Public

1­–14
© 2018 University of Utah
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DOI: 10.1177/1065912918776118
https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912918776118
journals.sagepub.com/home/prq

Nazli Avdan1 and Clayton Webb1

Abstract
Why does the public care more about some terrorist attacks than others? In recent years, there has been a wave
of terrorist attacks carried out by similar terrorist organizations, but these attacks have produced disparate public
responses. Existing research shows that terrorist attacks are more traumatic for people who live near terrorist targets,
but this research cannot explain differences in public attitudes about attacks occurring in other countries. We argue
that threat perceptions are shaped by the physical and personal proximity of terrorist attacks. The identities of the
victims are rarely known. People impute the characteristics of victims based on the country where the attack occurred.
These perceived identities determine the empathy people feel toward victims and affect perceptions of terrorist threats.
People feel a greater sense of vulnerability when attacks occur near their borders. We test these arguments using a
series of online experiments. We find that the location of the attack and the race and nationality of the victims drive
threat perceptions.

Keywords
terrorism, public opinion, threat perceptions, race

Why does the public care about some terrorist attacks
more than others? Consider three of the major terrorist
attacks of 2015. On April 2, 2015, four gunmen belonging
to the Somalia-based terrorist organization Al-Shabaab
attacked Garissa University College in Garissa, Kenya
(Levs and Yan 2015). Using explosives and small arms,
they killed 147 people and wounded seventy-nine. On
October 10, 2015, two Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) sui-
cide bombers detonated explosive vests near a train termi-
nal in Ankara, Turkey (Dearden 2015). The twin blasts
killed ninety-seven people and wounded four hundred
(Letsch and Khomami 2015; Melvin 2015). Finally, on
November 13, 2015, seven terrorists operating in three
teams staged coordinated attacks at six locations in Paris,
France. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks
(Mullen, Melvin, and Armstrong 2015). One hundred
thirty people were killed, and 367 were wounded
(Chandler, Calamur, and Ford 2015). The attacks had sim-
ilar casualty rates and were carried out by similar organi-
zations, but the public responses were notably different.
The attacks in Paris received more attention in the United
States than the attacks in Garissa and Ankara. Celebrities
issued public statements expressing sadness and outrage fol-
lowing the attacks in Paris (Shearlaw 2015). There were
public vigils held all over the United States (Stockman
2015). National monuments were lit up in the blue, white,
and red of the French flag (Mullen, Melvin, and Armstrong
2015). On social media, Facebook allowed users to drape
their profile pictures with the French flag (Gicobi 2015).
Facebook also activated their safety check function during
the Paris attack. The function allows users to “check in” as
safe for the benefit of friends and family. Until Paris, this
feature had been used exclusively for natural disasters
(Shearlaw 2015). The attacks in Garissa and Ankara did not
provoke similar waves of sympathy and did not receive the
same kind of attention. Figure 1 shows the Weekly Google
searches for the word “Terrorism” in the United States in
2015. Terrorism searches did not change after the attack in
Garissa, actually fell after the attack in Ankara, but spiked
after the attack in Paris. The attacks were similar, but they
were not viewed as such in the United States.
What explains this disparity? An article in the Atlantic
described the disparate responses from the global commu-
nity as an “empathy gap.” There is a familiarity factor
where “people tend to perk up when they see themselves in
the victims” (Graham 2015). Political scientists have ana-
lyzed the effects of victim identity and target location on
threat perceptions (Abrahms 2007, 2012) but overlooked
other characteristics of victims. We argue that personal and
physical proximity shape public perceptions of terrorist
1
University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA
Corresponding Author:
Clayton Webb, University of Kansas, 1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504,
Lawrence, KS 66045-3177, USA.
Email: webb767@ku.edu
2 Political Research Quarterly 00(0)
Figure 1.  Weekly Google searches for “terrorism.”
attacks. Personal proximity is the affinity one feels with the
victims of an attack. Physical proximity is the distance of an
attack from one’s home country. International terrorist
attacks occur overseas, but this does not mean the locations
are unimportant. People feel a greater sense of vulnerability
when attacks occur near their borders; people are less con-
cerned with attacks that occur far away. We test these argu-
ments using two experiments and evaluate the importance
of personal and physical proximity across a variety of con-
texts. We find that personal proximity heightens threat per-
ceptions but that different features of personal proximity are
more important than others. We find mixed evidence sug-
gesting that physical proximity matters when attacks tran-
spire in neighboring states.
Public Attitudes and Terrorism
Terrorism is “the premeditated use or threat to use vio-
lence by individuals or subnational groups to obtain a
political or social objective through the intimidation of a
large audience beyond that of their immediate victims”
(Enders and Sandler 2006, 3). Terrorism is a form of
asymmetric conflict. Lacking the resources necessary to
coerce target governments with overwhelming force, ter-
rorist organizations apply pressure on target governments
through target populations. “Terrorism seeks either to
inflict pain on noncombatants so they will pressure their
government to accede to the terrorists’ political demands,
or to delegitimize a government as a means to replace or
coerce it” (Arreguin-Toft 2001, 103). In this view, terror-
ism is performative, strategic communication (Jenkins
1980; Kydd and Walter 2006). Terrorists attack popula-
tions to communicate their capabilities and resolve to
multiple audiences, foreign and domestic.
The communication strategy can capture public atten-
tion. Polls show that many American voters rate terrorism
as a critical concern (Jacobson 2003). Terrorism is more
salient than other foreign policy issues because terrorism
requires the participation of the public. The public plays
the role of victim and audience. Victims of terrorism suffer
physical harm and psychological trauma. The public is also
the primary target audience. The audience extends beyond
national boundaries to international audiences. Davis and
MacDonald (2004) show how the September 11, 2001 ter-
rorist attacks affected the behavior and beliefs of people
living in Canada. Both domestic and international audi-
ences underpin the coercive effectiveness of terrorism.
The distinction between the roles of the public-as-victim
and public-as-audience has shaped the way different disci-
plines analyze the consequences of terrorism. Psychologists
have focused on the experiences of terrorism victims, find-
ing that people living closer to attacks are more likely to
experience psychological trauma (Cohen et al. 2002;
Fischhoff et al. 2003; Galea et al. 2002; Schlenger et al.
2002). In the year following the 9/11 attacks, New York
City residents displayed symptoms of posttraumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) (Schlenger et al. 2002). There were similar
findings following the attacks in Madrid and London
(Allouche and Lind 2010). People outside the immediate
proximity of attack sites may experience vicarious trauma
(Davis and MacDonald 2004; Schuster et al. 2001) through
indirect experience, for example, via media exposure.
Political science research has tended to focus on the
role of the public as an audience for terrorist violence.
The conventional wisdom is that terrorism is a costly sig-
nal of resolve and capabilities (Kydd and Walter 2006;
Pape 2003). Terrorist attacks elicit emotional responses
among victims and people not present for the attacks
(Lowenstein et al. 2001). Although the likelihood of
being harmed by terrorism is negligible, the emotional
effects of terrorism magnify the sense of imagined danger
(Kunreuther 2002). Therefore, as a costly signal, terror-
ism is only effective insofar as it alters threat perceptions.
Kydd and Walter (2006, 59–60) argue that “terrorism
often works” because “the greater the costs a terrorist
organization is able to inflict, the more credible its threat
Avdan and Webb 3
to inflict future costs, and the more likely the target is to
grant concessions.” People observe the carnage and are
meant to perceive it as dangerous (Crenshaw 1986, 400).
Terrorists try to exploit these perceptions to achieve their
political goals (Becker and Rubinstein 2011). People are
meant to weigh the costs and put pressure on their gov-
ernments. This pressure has a range of policy repercus-
sions whereby public attitudes shape terrorism and
counterterrorism output (Davis and Silver 2004;
Hetherington and Suhay 2011; Huddy et al. 2005). The
salience of terrorism as a “very serious problem” reso-
nates with public support for “draconian policies”
(Jenkins 1981).
There is an important connection between these paral-
lel lines of research that has not, to our knowledge, been
considered. Psychologists analyze the importance of
physical proximity for psychological trauma, but this
research focuses on the micro-geography of the areas
around attacks. It does not consider the political impor-
tance of macro-geographic boundaries, national borders.
Political scientists analyze the importance of target selec-
tion for target audiences, and the attendant implications
for public opinion and strategic communication, but fail
to consider a number of politically salient characteristics
of terrorism victims. In the following section, we develop
a theory to explain the roles that personal characteristics
and physical boundaries play in shaping public percep-
tions of terrorist threats.
Proximity and Attitudes
Personal Proximity
Recent terrorism research shows that perpetrators’ demo-
graphic characteristics mold our perceptions of terrorist
violence. D’Orazio and Salehyan (2016) show that
Americans are more likely to classify violent acts by
Arab Americans as terrorism than similar acts by white
Americans. Similarly, Huff and Kertzer (2018) demon-
strate Americans are predisposed to designate violence
perpetrated by Muslims as terrorism while they define the
same incidents as mass murder if the perpetrators are
non-Muslims. Underpinning these arguments is a mecha-
nism whereby individuals superimpose expectations and
beliefs about perpetrators based on their demographic
traits. Muslim and Arab perpetrators are deemed to be
more predisposed to commit terrorism. These expecta-
tions are based on the broader categories in which we
place perpetrators. These expectations condition policy
preferences. Piazza (2015) finds that people are more tol-
erant of tougher punitive measures against ethnically dis-
similar assailants.
This recent literature implicitly draws on social iden-
tity theory (SIT). SIT argues that we formulate opinions
about out-groups with respect to our in-groups, the com-
munities to which we belong (Tajfel 1981). Individuals
identify with an in-group by accentuating the similarities
they have with other people (Burke 1991). The out-group
is defined in contrast to the self (Hogg and Abrams 1988).
SIT stipulates that people have negative expectations
about members of out-groups (Linville, Fischer, and
Salovey 1989). In contrast, people are more forgiving of,
and sanguine toward, members of their in-groups. Out-
group animosity and in-group love cause people to make
systematic attribution errors about strangers (Tajfel 1982;
Tajfel and Turner 1979, 1986). For example, people attri-
bute heinous acts to inherent out-group characteristics
and ignore differences among out-group members. People
dismiss similar behaviors by members of their own com-
munities by attributing these behaviors to situational fac-
tors and labeling them atypical.
If out-group animosity toward assailants influences
threat perceptions, in-group love toward victims should
also matter in how we view violence and what strategies
we support to cope with violence. Psychological distance
to the out-group insulates people against the pain inflicted
on strangers (Skitka, Bauman, and Mullen 2004). On the
flip side, commonality is a conduit for pain, allowing
people to feel more empathy with strangers who share
similar traits. The hostility one feels toward a terrorist
assailant and the empathy one feels toward a terrorism
victim depends on one’s personal proximity to the assail-
ant and personal proximity to the victim. Personal prox-
imity is the perceived emotional and psychological
distance between the self and the other. Members of the
in-group are personally proximate to us. Members of the
out-group are personally remote from us.
We approximate this distance based on rough group
categorizations and designations. In the event of a terrorist
attack, people make snap judgments about the identities of
the victims. While news reporting in the immediate after-
math of an attack may reveal “facts on the ground” about
the number of people injured and killed (Huff and Kertzer
2018), the ethnic characteristics of the victims are not
immediately evident and may remain ambiguous.
Nationalities of victims and assailants offer rough cues
built on naïve beliefs about national-or-state identities.
People think of foreigners living in different countries as
having shared languages and ethnicities, despite objective
heterogeneity (Smith 1991; Triandafyllidou 1998).1
Gartzke and Gleditsch (2006) refer to differences within-
and-among countries based on race, religion, and lan-
guage as demographic markers. Because people lack a
sophisticated understanding of demographic heterogene-
ity, they draw on demographic markers to impute national
identities.2 For example, the average person in the United
States would regard victims of a terrorist attack in Turkey
as nonwhite Muslims. This identity is attributed to the
4 Political Research Quarterly 00(0)
victims despite the fact that many people in Turkey are not
Muslim and that many people in Turkey view themselves
as white. This contrasts with the way the average person in
the United States would regard victims of a terrorist attack
in France. The victims would be viewed as white and
Christian despite the fact that France is an extremely
diverse country. The initial shock of a terrorist attack, and
resulting uncertainty, magnify the importance of these
heuristics (Tversky and Kahneman 1973).
People ration their emotional responses to terrorist
events through the heuristic of personal proximity.
Personally proximate attacks are viewed as more threat-
ening, and personally remote attacks are viewed as less
threatening. This intuition informs the first hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: The personal proximity of terrorist
attacks is positively related to the perceived threat of
terrorist attacks.
Physical Proximity
Physical proximity also affects threat perceptions. As dis-
cussed above, physical proximity is an important topic in
existing psychological research. People living near attack
sites are more likely to exhibit PTSD and experience psy-
chological trauma. Lowenstein et al. (2001) find that
traumatic events are more vivid for people living in the
immediate proximity of those events. Fischhoff et al.
(2003) consider the psychological consequences of direct
and indirect exposure to the 9/11 attacks in New York
City. The attacks were most traumatic for people who
directly experienced or witnessed the attacks. Physical
proximity in this literature refers to physical distance,
measured in miles, of individuals from specific attack
sites. This physical distance is psychologically important
but is not politically significant.
Existing psychological research focuses on individual,
micro-geography. We depart from this research because
we are interested in national, macro-geography. The con-
ceptual difference falls along the same lines as the tradi-
tional micro-macro distinction in economics. The “micro”
in economics refers to the behavior of individuals while
the “macro” refers to the aggregate consequences of this
behavior (Dopfer, Foster, and Potts 2004, 264). The com-
mon, aggregate unit of analysis in international relations is
the state. While existing psychological research empha-
sizes the importance of physical distance from the indi-
vidual for understanding psychological trauma, we argue
that the physical distance from national boundaries is
important for political preferences and beliefs. Just as
people feel more at risk when attacks occur near them,
people will feel that their home countries, and thus them-
selves through their home countries, are more at risk when
attacks occur in countries near their home countries.
Attacks in contiguous countries should be particularly
threatening. The consequences of these attacks are not as
psychologically traumatizing, but the effects are politi-
cally potent.
Physical proximity to the state is not the same as phys-
ical proximity to the self. A simple example highlights the
distinction. Imagine a terrorist attack in Montreal,
Quebec. Montreal is closer to Burlington, Vermont than
Austin, Texas. Existing research suggests that the attack
would be more traumatic for people living in Burlington
than people living in Austin because Montreal is physi-
cally closer to Burlington than Austin. This may be true.
We argue that the attack is politically significant for peo-
ple living in both locations. Whether one lives in Texas or
Vermont, Canadians are still our “neighbors” to the
north.3 The political significance of Canada’s proximity
is different from the importance of physical proximity for
understanding PTSD.
There are two mechanisms that make physical proxim-
ity to one’s country important for threat perceptions. First,
there is a greater sense of familiarity with physically prox-
imate countries. People are more likely to have traveled to
physically proximate locations. Consider people living in
the United States. According to the National Travel and
Tourism Office, more than half of international travelers
from the United States in 2016 (66,960,943 travelers) vis-
ited either Mexico (25,181,630) or Canada (12,221,768).4
Polling data show that people living in the United States
feel affinity toward these countries. According to Gallup,
when asked about their “overall opinion” of these two
countries in a 2017 survey, an overwhelming majority of
Americans rated Canada (92%) and Mexico (64%) “very
favorable” or “mostly favorable.”5 Second, international
terrorist attacks occurring in physically proximate coun-
tries stimulate a sense of vulnerability. Borders are diffi-
cult to secure. This fact has played an important role in the
framing and formulation of U.S. border security policy in
the post 9-11 era (Ackleson 2005). People are concerned
about terrorist groups operating in nearby countries com-
ing into the United States. If it can happen there, it can
happen here. These dynamics make attacks in physically
proximate countries more salient than attacks occurring in
physically remote countries. This intuition informs the
second hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: The physical proximity of terrorist
attacks is positively related to perceived threat of ter-
rorist attacks.
Testing Proximity and Threat
Perceptions
We use two experiments to test our hypotheses. In both
experiments, participants were given a brief description
of a hypothetical terrorist attack and asked a series of
questions about the attack, their feelings about the attack,
Avdan and Webb 5

Table 1.  Experiment 1—Personal and Physical Proximity.

[Country] Terrorism
Terrorists used a bomb to destroy a bridge outside an airport in [city, country]. The blast left fifty [country] citizens dead and 123
wounded. A radical group calling themselves [group name], or [group acronym], claimed responsibility for the attack. The [group
acronym] leaders released a video calling for the national government to cut off diplomatic ties with the United States, saying, “it
is time that the U.S. government be held accountable for its imperialist policies.” They vowed to continue attacking public sites if
their demands were not met.

Proximity Location Group

Physical Personal Country City Name Acronym

Proximate Proximate Canada Brantford The Fighters for the Freedom of Canada FFC
Proximate Remote Mexico Moroleon-Uriangato Los Luchadores por la Libertad de México LLM
Remote Proximate England Exeter The Fighters for the Freedom of England FFE
Remote Remote Argentina Santa Rosa Los Luchadores por la Libertad de Argentina LLA

and themselves. Our analysis proceeds in two stages. The
first experiment tests our hypotheses about personal and
physical proximity. Our second experiment unpacks
some of the elements of personal proximity.
We recruited participants for each experiment using
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). MTurk is an online
marketplace where “task creators” (requesters) pay work-
ers in exchange for the completion of “Human Intelligence
Tasks” (HITs).6 We limited recruitment to voting age U.S.
citizens. Some have expressed reservations about the use
of MTurk, arguing that MTurk samples are not representa-
tive of the U.S. population. This issue has been addressed
by a number of studies. U.S. MTurk samples are as, or are
more, representative of the U.S. population in terms of
age, geographic area, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and
education level when compared with alternative recruit-
ment techniques (Buhrmester, Kwang, and Gosling 2011;
Casler, Bickel, and Hackett 2013; Horton, Rand, and
Zeckhauser 2011; Mason and Suri 2012; Paolacci,
Chandler, and Ipeirotis 2010). Also, as long as participants
are sampled from the same group, randomization ensures
that the causal inferences drawn from comparisons among
the experimental conditions are a function of the treat-
ments and not group characteristics.7 If there are addi-
tional concerns about the demographic characteristics of
the samples, these concerns can be addressed by including
controls in regression models to partial-out confounding
variables. For each experiment, we conduct an analysis of
variance (ANOVA) to test the differences among the
experimental conditions and present a series of regression
models to demonstrate the robustness of our findings to
sample characteristics and alternative specifications.
Personal and Physical Proximity
In our first experiment, we manipulate personal and physi-
cal proximity by randomizing participants into one of four
conditions where they read about a hypothetical terrorist
attack that occurs in a different country. The experimental
conditions are summarized in Table 1. A terrorist organi-
zation attacks a bridge outside of an airport in Canada,
Mexico, Argentina, or England. Fifty people are killed,
and another 123 are wounded. Canada and England are
considered personally proximate, whereas Mexico and
Argentina are considered personally remote. The national
identities evoked by Canada and England are closer to the
national identity of the United States than to the national
identities evoked by Argentina and Mexico. The racial and
linguistic demographics of the populations of Canada and
England more closely resemble the population of the
United States. Canada and Mexico are contiguous to the
United States. England and Argentina are, relatively,
physically remote because they do not share borders with
the United States. We altered the city, country, and the
name of the terrorist organization for the different condi-
tions. The common vignette, the locations, and the names
of the terrorist organizations are given in Table 1.
Participants responded to a short survey after being ran-
domized into conditions. The dependent variable in the
analysis is threat perception. Participants were asked to
rate the threat posed by the terrorist organization to the
United States from 0 (not threatening) to 10 (very threaten-
ing). Participants were also asked a series of demographic
questions—race, sex, education, political party, and so
on—and a number of manipulation checks to ensure that
they perceived the important features of the attack.
The results from the first experiment are summarized
in Figure 2. The top panel of Figure 2 displays the
responses to the threat perception question for each of the
four conditions as box-plots. The thick horizontal lines in
the box-plots are the median responses, the boxes repre-
sent the interquartile ranges, and lines at the top and bot-
tom of each plot are the response maxima and minima for
each condition. In each case, the responses range from 0
to 10. The second panel shows summary statistics for the
conditions and the experimental results. The first three
6 Political Research Quarterly 00(0)

Figure 2.  Personal and physical proximity.

columns of the second panel show the number of obser- Table 2.  Personal and Physical Proximity.
vations in each condition (N), the median responses
(Medians), and the mean responses (Means). The next Model 1 Model 2
five columns of the second panel give the ANOVA results. Intercept 4.830** (0.303) 4.398** (0.583)
The contributions of the two experimental factors to the Personal Prox 1.587** (0.355) 1.476** (0.333)
sum and mean squared deviations are given along with Physical Prox 0.671** (0.355) 0.722* (0.341)
the F statistics for each experimental factor. Democrat −0.146 (0.434)
The observed differences in threat perceptions are con- Independent −0.710 (0.470)
sistent with theoretical expectations. Terrorist attacks in Other −0.250 (0.806)
personally proximate countries are viewed as more threat- Female 1.712** (0.337)
ening than attacks in personally remote countries, and ter- White −0.293 (0.610)
rorist attacks in physically proximate countries are viewed Millennial 0.070 (0.353)
as more threatening than attacks in physically remote Income 0.892* (0.372)
countries, but only the F statistic for the personal proxim- College −1.630** (0.355)
ity experimental factor reaches the α = .05 level of statisti- News 0.312 (0.380)
Adj. R2 .072 .212
cal significance. The ordinary least squares regression
N 306 306
(OLS) results presented in Table 2 show the main effects
presented in Table 1 are not driven by the demographic Standard errors in parentheses. Personal Prox: Canada and England =
features of the sample. Model 1 shows the results from the 1. Physical Prox: Canada and Mexico = 1.
regression of the threat perception variable on the experi- *p < .05. **p < .01.
mental factors, personal and physical proximity. Model 2
includes a number of demographic controls. Democrat, otherwise. Finally, News is coded 1 if the participant
Independent, and Other are variables included to capture reports watching or reading news for seven or more hours
the partisanship of the respondent. Each is coded 1 for par- a week.8 This final variable is used to differentiate between
ticipants who identified with each political group and 0 high and low information participants.
otherwise. Republicans are the omitted category. Female The results presented in Table 2 are consistent with the
is coded 1 if the participant identifies as a woman and zero results presented in Figure 2. The coefficient for personal
otherwise. White is coded 1 if the participant identifies proximity is positive and statistically significant in both
their race as white and 0 otherwise. Millennial is coded 1 models; the coefficient for physical proximity is positive
if the participant falls into an age group of either eighteen in both models but only reaches the α = .05 level of statis-
to twenty-five or twenty-six to thirty-five, and 0 other- tical significance in model 2. The demographic controls
wise. Income is coded 1 if the participant reports an presented in Table 2 are consistent with previous research.
income above $35,000 and 0 otherwise. College is coded Republicans in our sample, on average, gave higher eval-
1 if the participant has at least a bachelor’s degree and 0 uations of the threat posed by the different terrorist groups
Avdan and Webb 7
Figure 3.  Country comparisons and physical proximity.
compared with Democrats, Independents, or people who
identified their political affiliations as “Other.” Women
and people with higher incomes, on average, perceived
the threats posed by the terrorist organizations as higher
compared with men and people with lower incomes.9 The
coefficient on College is negative and statistically signifi-
cant. This is consistent with research showing that people
with college degrees tend to feel less anxiety toward out-
groups (Mansfield and Mutz 2009). Race and Age were
not significant determinants of threat perceptions in this
sample.
The results for physical proximity appear mixed. The
mean and median responses are higher for the physically
proximate conditions compared with the physically
remote conditions, and the coefficients are in the expected
direction in both regression models. However, the effect
of physical proximity is only significant at the α = .05
level in the second regression model. Although this could
be considered as evidence against the physical proximity
hypothesis, a careful examination of the results reveals
that the F test for physical proximity and the coefficient
for physical proximity in model 1 are significant at α = .1.
This is sufficient evidence to suggest the physical prox-
imity hypothesis should not be dismissed entirely.
Figure 3 unpacks the effects of physical proximity. The
top panel of Figure 3 shows the distributions of the
responses across the four experimental conditions, the
second panel compares the distributions of the physically
proximate and physically remote countries, and the third
panel shows t tests for the comparisons among the experi-
mental conditions and the experimental factors. The black
lines in the top two panels are the physically proximate
countries. The gray lines are the physically remote coun-
tries. The solid lines in the top panel are the personally
proximate countries, and the dashed lines are the person-
ally remote countries. The vertical lines in panel 1 are the
means associated with the experimental conditions. The
vertical lines in panel 2 are the means associated with the
physically proximate and physically remote countries.
The patterns in Figure 3 illustrate why the results in the
models presented above appear ambiguous. Comparing
the physically proximate countries to the physically
remote countries, the differences between the means are
relatively small. The difference in means between Canada
and England is less than one, and the difference in means
between Mexico and Argentina is less than one. This
explains why the t tests for these comparisons shown in
panel 3 are small. However, there are clear differences in
the four distributions. The highest density region of the
Canada distribution is greater than the highest density
region of the England distribution, and the highest density
region of the Mexico distribution is greater than the high-
est density region of the Argentina distribution.10 The
effects of physical proximity are clearer in the second
8 Political Research Quarterly 00(0)

Table 3.  Experiment 2—Racial and Religious Proximity.

Terrorism in [Eastern Europe/Sub-Saharan Africa]
Terrorists detonated twin bombs in the city of [city], [country] yesterday. One in a large [religious building], another in a nearby
market. The blasts left fifty [country] citizens dead and 123 wounded. A radical group calling themselves the [group name] ([group
acronym]) claimed responsibility for the attack. The FFR leaders released a video calling for the national government to cut off
diplomatic ties with the United States, saying, “it is time that the U.S. government be held accountable for its imperialist policies.”
They vowed to continue attacking public sites if their demands were not met.

Proximity Location Group

Racial Religious Country City Building Name Acronym

Proximate Proximate Romania Buzau Church The Fighters for the Freedom of Romania FFR
Proximate Remote Albania Elbasan Mosque The Fighters for the Freedom of Albania FFA
Remote Proximate Zambia Kasama Church The Fighters for the Freedom of Zambia FFZ
Remote Remote Guinea Kankan Mosque The Fighters for the Freedom of Guinea FFG

panel. There is a larger difference in the means, and the
contrast is apparent in the trends. The black line (physi-
cally proximate countries) increases from left to right, and
the gray line (physically remote countries) decreases from
left to right. The t-statistic for the difference between the
physically proximate mean and the physically remote
mean is 1.83. This is significant at the α = .1 level. In total,
we view the evidence presented here as consistent with
Hypothesis 1, but the effects of physical proximity are far
less cogent than the effects of personal proximity.
The results from the first experiment provide support for
our arguments about personal and physical proximity, but
there are additional issues that can be considered. Our
experimental factors vary the location, language, race, and
colonial heritage of the victims. Existing research has
emphasized another important element of identity that
affects threat perceptions, religion. Huff and Kertzer (2018)
show that violent acts by Muslims are more likely to be
labeled terrorism. A related finding suggests that white
Americans are more likely to label Arab Americans as ter-
rorists in the wake of violence compared with other ethnic
minorities (D’Orazio and Salehyan 2016). Do race and reli-
gion also affect the empathy people feel toward victims?
Our next experiment extends our argument about the per-
sonal proximity of terrorist attacks along these dimensions,
the imputed race and religion of terrorism victims.
Racial and Religious Proximity
In our second experiment, we considered the importance
of two cultural markers for the relationship between per-
sonal proximity and threat perceptions, religious proxim-
ity and racial proximity. Again, participants were
randomized into one of four conditions where they read
about hypothetical terrorist attacks that occurred in dif-
ferent countries. Terrorists detonated two bombs in dif-
ferent locations. One bomb is detonated in a market. The
other bomb is detonated in either a church or a mosque.
The countries were chosen based on their major national
religions and the major racial ethnic groups. The experi-
mental conditions are summarized in Table 3.
The level of personal proximity to the United States
varies across the four countries. A country is considered
racially proximate to the United States if the major racial
ethnic group is white. Romania and Albania are majority
white countries. Zambia and Guinea are majority non-
white countries. A country is considered religiously prox-
imate to the United States if the major religious ethnic
group is Christian. Romania and Zambia are majority
Christian countries. Albania and Guinea are majority
Muslim countries. We highlight the difference between
Christian and Muslim countries in the vignettes by allow-
ing one of the attack locations to be a church or a mosque.
Race and religion are two of the major demographic
markers that distinguish people living in France from peo-
ple living in Kenya and Turkey. Did people care less about
these attacks in Kenya because the victims were not white?
Did people care less about the attacks in Turkey because
Turkey is a majority Muslim country? Are both dynamics
at work? Our personal proximity argument suggests that
people impute the characteristics of the victims based on
the location of the attack, process their affinity for the vic-
tims, and then evaluate the seriousness of the attack.
The results from the second experiment are presented
in Figure 4. The top panel of Figure 4 summarizes the
responses to the threat perception question across the four
conditions. The second panel of Figure 4 shows the sum-
mary statistics and ANOVA results. Racial proximity has
a statistically significant effect on threat perceptions. The
attacks in Romania and Albania were perceived as more
threatening than the attacks in Zambia and Guinea. This
is consistent with the results from experiment 1. Race
matters. Surprisingly, the religion of the victims did not
have a statistically significant influence on threat percep-
tions. In fact, the attacks in Albania were perceived as the
most threatening among all the conditions. These results
Avdan and Webb 9

Figure 4.  Racial and religious proximity.

Table 4.  Racial and Religious Proximity.

Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6

Intercept 4.943** (0.348) 4.713** (0.639) 5.338** (1.325) 4.001** (1.234)
Religious Prox −0.292 (0.361) −0.336 (0.353) 1.173 (0.780) 1.027 (0.709)
Racial Prox 0.842* (0.365) 0.829* (0.358) 0.883 (0.726) 2.222** (0.667)
Democrat −0.501 (0.471) −0.013 (1.100) −1.443 (0.936)
Independent −0.811 (0.501) −0.922 (1.131) −2.462* (1.030)
Other −1.832* (0.908) −3.211 (3.487)  
Female 1.351** (0.352) 1.396* (0.701) 2.309** (0.691)
White −0.754 (0.776) −2.923* (1.287) 0.782 (1.368)
Millennial 0.298 (0.362) −0.329 (0.753) 0.404 (0.708)
Income 0.531 (0.377) 0.503 (0.783) 0.631 (0.685)
College −0.590 (0.371) −1.581** (0.788) −0.467 (0.705)
News −0.099 (0.394) −1.306* (0.774) −0.554 (0.713)
Adj. R2 .021 .102 .194 .371
N 312 312 94 78

Standard errors in parentheses. Religious Prox: Romania and Zambia = 1. Racial Prox: Romania and Albania = 1.
*p < .05. **p < .01.

suggest race matters more than religion. The regression
results presented in Table 4 corroborate these findings.
Table 4 presents estimates from four OLS regression
models. The first two models show the main effects and
the main effects controlling for demographic factors. The
effect of racial proximity is statistically significant, even
after controlling for the political affiliation, sex, race, age,
income, education, and news consumption of the partici-
pants. The control variables are consistent with the previ-
ous regression results. The signs of the coefficients do not
change, but only the effect of sex (Female) on threat per-
ceptions meets conventional levels of significance.
The next two models select observations based on
whether the participant accurately identified the religion
of the victims (model 5) and the race of the victims
(model 6). We wanted to see whether the observed effects
were influenced by the inability of the participants to per-
ceive the differences among the countries. Participants
might know that Guinea and Zambia are African coun-
tries while Albania and Romania were European, but they
might not know the religious profiles of the countries
despite our attempt to frame the news about the victims.
The attrition in the samples is consistent with this expec-
tation. Only 30 percent of participants were able to cor-
rectly identify the religion of the victims (model 5), and
only 25 percent of the participants were able to correctly
identify the race of the victims (model 6). Limiting the
sample to participants who were able to correctly
10 Political Research Quarterly 00(0)
perceive the differences among victims did not change
the inferences from the previous regressions, but there
were interesting changes in the sizes of the effects.
The coefficient for racial proximity increases by 170
percent when the sample is limited to people who cor-
rectly identified the race of the victims. The effect of
racial proximity is 0.829 in model 4 and increases to
2.222 in model 6. This change buttresses the support for
the inference that racial proximity affects threat percep-
tions. When people were able to differentiate the victims
based on race, race mattered more! A similar change hap-
pens in the case of religious proximity. The sign of the
coefficient changes from negative to positive, consistent
with the theoretical expectation, but the coefficient does
not reach conventional levels of significance. The reli-
gion of the victims does not appear to have an indepen-
dent effect on affinity for victims. We explore the
implications of this finding in more detail in the follow-
ing section.
Discussion and Conclusion
We began with a discussion of the 2015 attacks in Garissa,
Kenya, Ankara, Turkey, and Paris France. The attacks
used similar methods, were carried out by similar groups,
and had similar death tolls but garnered disparate public
responses. People cared more about the attacks in France
than the attacks in Turkey and Kenya. We believe the per-
sonal and physical proximities of the attacks explain this
“empathy gap.” We tested these expectations using two
online survey experiments.
Personal proximity is determined by the affinity peo-
ple feel toward victims of attacks. We tested this proposi-
tion in multiple contexts. In experiment 1, we tested this
hypothesis by varying the location of the attack. Attacks
against countries that had more overlapping demographic
markers with the United States (Canada and England)
were perceived as more threatening than attacks against
other states. In experiment 2, we unpack some of these
demographic markers, race and religion. The United
States is a majority white and majority Christian country.
Attacks against white countries (Romania and Albania)
were perceived as more threatening than attacks against
nonwhite countries (Zambia and Guinea). There are a
number of theoretically relevant findings that can be dis-
tilled from these results.
First, race matters. In the aftermath of an attack, peo-
ple do not know the racial characteristics of the victims,
but people impute these characteristics and assess the
severity of threats. People do not care as much about peo-
ple who do not look like them. Of course, not all American
are white. The empathy gap reflects the sentiments of the
cultural majority. Americans, on average, cared more
about the attacks in Paris because most Americans are
white. This pattern manifests in our experimental data as
well. In addition to the regression analyses presented in
Table 4, we conducted a supplementary analysis where
we restricted the sample by race. We found that the effect
of racial proximity was most acute in the sample of white
participants (245 of 312) who correctly identified the race
of the victims (sixty of 245). Racial proximity had no
effect for the nonwhite participants.11 Given the predilec-
tion of the racial majority, it is not surprising to see news
reporting and national conversations skewed toward cov-
erage of white victims. There appears to be a “rally
around our race” effect. This fixation on white tragedy
has important political implications.
Not all terrorist attacks move the public opinion nee-
dle. Informing the public is costly. Politicians are willing
to bear these costs for attacks on white people but are not
for attacks on nonwhite people. This implies varying lev-
els of political utility during campaigns and elections. In
2016, the terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium and Nice,
France received considerable attention in both U.S. presi-
dential primaries (Lee 2016; Tatum 2016). Similar attacks
in Istanbul, Turkey; Maiduguri, Nigeria; Ziltan, Libya;
and Lahore, Pakistan were ignored. These differences
also matter during nonelection years. Future research
should consider how these differences influence the will-
ingness of people to accept potentially expensive and
invasive counterterrorism policies.
These findings also have normative implications. Race
should not govern our empathy. Terrorist violence occurs
every day, but we only change our Facebook profiles and
hold public vigils when it happens in predominately white
countries to predominately white people. These signs of
solidarity may be cathartic, but focusing on the suffering
of predominately white populations is costly. Depicting
terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris as unique normal-
izes terrorist attacks that occur in other countries. If these
depictions fall along racial or cultural lines, then these
depictions normalize violence against racial and cultural
groups. This generates an indifference to suffering that has
important social and political consequences. In domestic
settings, this manifests as indifference to the suffering of
minority groups. Inequality and violence against minority
populations become more acceptable to dominant cultural
groups. In international settings, this manifests as callous
foreign policies. Western countries refuse to accept refu-
gees from war-torn societies because of the small risk that
refugees will commit acts of terrorism. This process of
normalization creates zones of indifference—domesti-
cally and internationally—that perpetuate poverty, vio-
lence, and suffering.
Second, religion does not seem to matter. Religious
proximity is not statistically significant in the ANOVA or
the regression models. Limiting the sample to people who
correctly identified the religion of the victims did not
Avdan and Webb 11
Table 5.  Identifying Racial and Religious Proximity.
Full
Country Religion Race X N
Romania Christian White 4.63 81
Albania Muslim White 4.67 97
Zambia Christian Nonwhite 3.51 80
Guinea Muslim Nonwhite 4.15 54
alter the inferences from the models. Although this find-
ing was not consistent with our expectations, the null
result does not mean that religion is irrelevant.
Table 5 shows the attrition rates in the sample for the
second experiment when the sample is limited to partici-
pants who correctly identified the religion and race of the
victims. The countries and each country’s dominant race
and religion are listed along the vertical dimension of the
table. The horizontal dimension of the table displays the
average responses ( X ) and sample sizes (N) associated
with the full sample (Full) and the samples that are
restricted to people who correctly identified the religions
of the victims (Religion) and the races of the victims
(Race). Table 5 also shows the changes in the means asso-
ciated with the restrictions (Δ).
Restricting the sample to individuals who correctly
identified the religions and races of the victims causes
substantial sample attrition. The number of participants
in each category falls by, roughly, 60 to 80 percent in
many of the conditions. The results do not change in sub-
stantively meaningful ways, so there is no concern that
this attrition affects the inferences from the models, but
the patterns in the changes are illuminating.
The changes in the means caused by the attrition are
consistent with our personal proximity hypothesis. When
the sample is limited only to people who correctly iden-
tify the religions of the victims, the mean threat percep-
tions increase for Christian victims and decrease for
Muslim victims. When the sample is limited only to peo-
ple who correctly identify the races of the victims, the
mean threat perceptions increase for white victims and
decrease for nonwhite victims. The changes in the means
are larger for the subsample of participants able to iden-
tify the race, but the differences still exist.
These patterns have two important implications. First,
religion might matter in other circumstances. We deliber-
ately chose countries that have not played an important
role in U.S. politics. We wanted to avoid the possibility of
pre-conceived attitudes about the countries, unrelated to
national identities, driving the results. Although we avoid
this risk, the rate of attrition illustrates that it is harder for
people to impute the racial and religious characteristics of
the victims when they know less about the countries.
This makes the test conservative. The patterns in the data
Religion Race
X N ∆ X N ∆
5.68 16 +1.05 6.44 18 +1.81
3.82 41 0.85 4.80 21 +0.13
3.92 13 +0.41 3.35 28 0.16
4.00 24 0.15 3.54 11 0.61
suggest that an effect might be observed in a larger sample
or in a sample where there is less attrition. It might be
easier for participants to identity Iraq and Iran as “Muslim
countries” compared with Albania and Guinea. Second,
these patterns highlight valuable avenues for future
research. Which countries have national identities that are
easier, or more difficult, to identify? Which characteristics
of those identities are most salient? When, if ever, do the
religious characteristics of the victims matter? How, if at
all, are racial and religious identities of victims related in
these processes?
Physical proximity is determined by location. People
care more about international attacks that occur in neigh-
boring countries. We tested this proposition in experi-
ment 1 by manipulating the country where the attack
occurred, countries that border the United States, and
countries that do not. Physical proximity was a signifi-
cant predictor of threat perceptions. There are different
ways to view the substantive significance of the physical
proximity result. On one hand, this result is not surpris-
ing. Existing research shows that attacks are more trau-
matic for people in the immediate vicinities of attacks.
On the other hand, this result has important implications
for thinking about the geography of terrorist attacks. We
differ from existing research by focusing on the role of
physical distance in perceptions of terrorist events in for-
eign countries. Our results qualify the effects of distance
in two important ways. First, our results show that conti-
guity heightens threat perceptions. Existing research
treats distance as linear because it focuses on the micro-
geography of terrorist events. People in Manhattan were
more traumatized by 9/11 than people in Minneapolis.
Our result suggests a more politically important macro-
geographical perspective. Distance matters for trauma
and threat perceptions, but borders matter too. Attacks
occurring near one’s borders create a greater sense of vul-
nerability. Second, our results also suggest a “rally around
the neighborhood” effect. Other things equal, people
cared more about attacks against the immediate neigh-
bors of the United States—Canada and Mexico—than
attacks in more distant countries. Although these results
are meaningful, we should qualify these results by saying
that our study only suggests that physical proximity mat-
ters for contiguous countries. More research is necessary
12 Political Research Quarterly 00(0)
to discern the salience of physical proximity across other
spatial demarcations, for example, regional proximity or
continental proximity. The results also suggest other
fruitful avenues for future research considering physical
proximity and political salience in the domestic context.
We know that people living in the vicinity of attacks are
more traumatized by attacks. Do the locations of domes-
tic attacks affect the perceived salience of attacks as well?
Are attacks against cities perceived as more threatening
than attacks in remote areas? Are attacks against sym-
bolic or economically important targets perceived as
more threatening than alternative soft targets?
The defining feature of terrorism as a political strategy
extends beyond the physical damage caused by terrorist
attacks. Terrorism has a psychological dimension. It is
meant to incite fear. The results from this study illustrate
that psychological consequences of terrorism depend on
more than tactics or organizational traits. The environ-
mental context of the attack and the attack characteristics
affect threat perceptions. We gain a more vivid grasp of
the consequences of transnational terrorism, and the
potential political implications, when we consider the
locations of attacks and the identities of the victims.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The authors received financial support for the research from the
University of Kansas Department of Political Science.
Notes
 1. The terms nation, state, and nation-state have distinct
meanings. A nation is a group of people with a common
heritage, history, or culture. A state is a territory that is
recognized as an organized political community. A nation-
state is a sovereign country whose citizens or participants
are relatively homogeneous. The latter definition is most
relevant for our argument. Although the populations of
most states are not homogeneous, people impute state
identities based on the numerically or politically dominant
ethnic, religious, and/or religious grouping (Gartzke and
Gleditsch 2006).
 2. Some may attach a higher weight to race or religion,
whereas others may weight these equally. We have no a
priori reason to expect people to attach differential weights
to these categories.
  3. President Bill Clinton famously said that Canada and the
United States are “neighbors by the grace of nature” in a
speech he gave to the Canadian Parliament in February of
1995. See http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=51017
for the full address.
 4. https://thepointsguy.com/2017/01/record-number-of-
americans-traveled-abroad-2016/
 5. http://news.gallup.com/poll/1624/perceptions-foreign-
countries.aspx
  6. Participants were randomly assigned into conditions and
were compensated ($0.40) once the task was completed.
The three experiments were conducted between October
2015 and February 2016, each experiment took approxi-
mately ten minutes to complete.
  7. Randomization for the experiments was automated through
Qualtrics, a web-based survey platform that includes tools
for designing experiments and managing data.
  8. The use of covariates in the analysis of experimental data
is somewhat controversial. The experimental factors are
exogenous by design. Some argue that this makes con-
trol variables unnecessary in experimental analyses. We
are agnostic about the use of control variables in experi-
mental analyses. Control variables are not used in models
1 and 3 or the analysis of variance (ANOVA) models.
The inferences from the models are consistent across
specifications.
 9. This is consistent with the work of Huddy, Khatib, and
Capelos (2002).
10. The Argentina distribution appears bi-modal, but the line is
higher around 0.
11. These results are presented in the online supplemental
materials, Section 2.
Supplemental Materials
Supplemental materials for this article are available with the man-
uscript on the Political Research Quarterly (PRQ) website.
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