Collaborative Research: Threat Perception Following Mass Violence Events

经历大规模暴力、恐怖主义或其他创伤性事件会影响个人对社会世界的感知和反应。有趣的是，在媒体广泛报道大规模暴力事件之后，许多人报告认为物体、人和情况特别具有威胁性；而且，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）和他们的合作者将通过经验测试媒体对现实世界威胁的情绪性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）。具体来说，他们将测试这样一个假设，即媒体报道关注由严重的现实世界威胁事件造成的死亡和破坏，将比媒体报道关注人们对威胁的英勇反应的同一事件，对随后的威胁感知产生更不利的影响。这项工作可能会揭示媒体对恐怖主义事件的情绪性报道对现实世界的潜在有害影响，并提出减轻这种影响的方法（例如，通过报道对此类悲剧的积极反应，如急救人员的英雄事迹）。这项工作还将有助于确定在大规模暴力或恐怖主义事件发生后，或当媒体对此类事件的关注增加时，最有可能改变威胁认知的个人类型。该项目将在实验室中使用多种威胁感知范式，研究现实世界大规模暴力对受影响社区成员威胁感知的影响。一项纵向研究将用于评估在即将到来的波士顿马拉松爆炸案周年纪念日前后媒体重新报道之前、期间和之后人们对威胁感知的变化。波士顿马拉松爆炸案是一场严重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来评估在社区和个人层面上对爆炸和与威胁有关的事件的媒体报道的曝光变化。具体来说，该研究将检查威胁感知的变化，因为：(1)参与者在即将到来的悲剧周年纪念日附近接触到波士顿马拉松爆炸事件的实际媒体报道时自然发生的变化；(2)在实验室中接触到媒体风格的关于爆炸事件的小片段，这些小片段被设计成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（如枪支）和社会威胁（如愁眉苦脸）在意识意识之外的反应。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可探测性。总的来说，这项研究将更好地理解现实世界的大规模暴力和媒体对它的反应如何影响基本的感知机制，这些机制是受影响社区成员日常判断和行为变化的基础。

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.