Collaborative Research: Threat Perception Following Mass Violence Events

经历大规模暴力，恐怖主义或其他创伤事件可以塑造个人如何看待和应对他们的社会世界。有趣的是，随着媒体对大规模暴力事件的广泛报道，许多人报告说，他们认为物体、人和情况特别具有威胁性;随着媒体报道转向强调复原力和社区凝聚力，这种对威胁的高度警惕似乎消失了。Karen Quigley（东北大学），Yu-Ru Lin（匹兹堡大学）和他们的合作者将根据经验测试对现实世界威胁的情感强大的媒体报道如何改变威胁感知（即，对潜在有害事件、情况或刺激的感知是存在的或即将发生的）。具体来说，他们将测试这样一个假设，即媒体对严重现实威胁事件造成的死亡和破坏的报道，将对随后的威胁感知产生更不利的影响，而不是媒体对同一事件的报道，重点是人们对威胁的英勇反应。这项工作可以揭示情感上强大的媒体报道恐怖主义事件的潜在有害现实世界后果，并提出减轻这种影响的方法（例如，通过报道对这种悲剧的积极反应，如第一反应者的英雄事迹）。这项工作还将有助于确定在大规模暴力或恐怖主义事件后或在媒体对此类事件的关注增加时，最有可能改变威胁观念的人的类型。该项目将在实验室中使用多种威胁感知范式，研究现实世界中的大规模暴力对受影响社区成员的威胁感知的影响。一项纵向研究将用于评估在波士顿马拉松爆炸案即将到来的周年纪念日之前，期间和之后重新进行媒体报道之前，期间和之后的威胁感知变化，这是一个强大的现实世界大规模暴力事件，造成3人死亡，250多人受伤。调查人员将利用新的媒体跟踪措施，评估整个社区和个人在媒体报道爆炸和威胁相关事件方面的变化。具体来说，这项研究将检查威胁感知的变化，这是由于（1）参与者在即将到来的悲剧周年纪念日附近接触波士顿马拉松爆炸案的实际媒体报道时自然发生的变化，以及（2）在实验室中接触媒体风格的爆炸事件，这些爆炸事件旨在专门激活与悲剧相关的消极或积极概念。第二项横断面研究将检查对身体威胁的反应（即，枪支）和社会威胁（即，在意识之外显示的皱眉的脸。这将测试暴露和情感框架是否会影响身体和社会威胁的有意识检测能力。总之，这项研究将提供一个更好的理解如何现实世界的大规模暴力和媒体对它的反应可以影响基本的感知机制，在受影响的社区成员之间的日常判断和行为的变化。

Experiencing mass violence, terrorism, or other traumatic events can shape how individuals perceive and respond to their social world. Anecdotally, following extensive media coverage of mass violence events, many report perceiving objects, people, and situations as particularly threatening; and, as media coverage shifts to emphasize resilience and community cohesion, this hypervigilance for threats seems to dissipate. Karen Quigley (Northeastern University), Yu-Ru Lin (University of Pittsburgh) and their collaborators will empirically test how emotionally potent media coverage of a real-world threat alters threat perception (i.e., the perception of a potentially harmful event, situation or stimulus as present or imminent). Specifically, they will test the hypothesis that media coverage focusing on death and destruction caused by a serious real-world threat event will have a more detrimental impact on subsequent threat perception than media coverage of the same event that focuses on people's heroic responses to the threat. This work could reveal potential harmful real-world consequences of emotionally potent media reporting of a terrorism event as well as suggest methods for alleviating such effects (e.g., by reporting on positive responses to such tragedies, like the heroics of first responders). This work will also help characterize the types of individuals who are at greatest risk of altered threat perception after a mass violence or terrorism event or when media attention to such events increases. This project will examine the effects of real-world mass violence on threat perception among members of an affected community using multiple threat perception paradigms in the laboratory. A longitudinal study will be used to assess changes in threat perception before, during and after renewed media coverage near an upcoming anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, a potent real-world mass violence event that killed three and injured more than 250. The investigators will utilize novel media tracking measures to assess changes in exposure to media coverage of the bombings and threat-related events at both the community-wide and individual level. Specifically, the research will examine changes in threat perception as a result of (1) naturally-occurring changes in participants' exposure to actual media coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings near an upcoming anniversary of the tragedy and (2) in-lab exposure to media-style vignettes about the bombings that are designed to specifically activate negative or positive concepts related to the tragedy. A second, cross-sectional study will examine responses to physical threats (i.e., guns) and social threats (i.e., scowling faces) shown outside of conscious awareness. This will test whether exposure and affective framing can influence the conscious detectability of physical and social threats. Taken together, this research will provide a better understanding of how real-world mass violence and the media response to it can influence basic perceptual mechanisms that underlie changes in every day judgments and behaviors among members of the affected communities.