Abstract
AbstractDoes exposure to cyber terrorism prompt calls for retaliatory military strikes? By what psychological mechanism does it do so? Through a series of controlled, randomized experiments, this study exposed respondents (n = 2,028) to television news reports depicting cyber and conventional terror attacks against critical infrastructures in the United States, United Kingdom and Israel. The findings indicate that only lethal cyber terrorism triggers strong support for retaliation. Findings also confirm that anger bridges exposure to cyber terrorism and retaliation, rather than psychological mechanisms such as threat perception or anxiety as other studies propose. These findings extend to the cyber realm a recent trend that views anger as a primary mechanism linking exposure to terrorism with militant preferences. With cyber terrorism a mounting international concern, this study demonstrates how exposure to this threat can generate strong public support for retaliatory policies, depending on the lethality of the attack.
Highlights
Security officials have long warned of the foreboding threat posed by cyber terrorism
How does exposure to cyber attacks affect political preferences and support for government actions? By what mechanism does exposure lead to shifts in political attitudes, and how does this differ from shifts stemming from conventional terrorism and political violence? New theories and models relating to cyber terrorism have been developed in the fields of law (Schmitt 2017), foreign policy and strategic studies (Clarke 2016; Herzog 2011) and psychology (Backhaus et al 2020; Gross, Canetti and Vashdi 2018), yet equivalent models are conspicuously absent in political science
Still another prospect is that exposure to cyber terrorism may elicit a weaker political response than conventional terrorism due to the lack of historical fatalities associated with cyber attacks
Summary
Security officials have long warned of the foreboding threat posed by cyber terrorism. A culminating experiment exposed 1,848 respondents in the three countries to various forms of terror attacks These controlled experiments tested how (1) the form of terrorism (conventional kinetic terror vs cyber terror) and (2) the outcome of terrorism (lethal vs non-lethal effects) influence support for military retaliation. We confirm that the mechanism underpinning the relationship between exposure to cyber terrorism and support for retaliation is driven by a mediated model: exposure to terrorism causes anger, which in turn drives political support for retaliation This conclusion extends to the cyber realm recent findings that view anger, and not anxiety or threat perception, as the predominant variable linking political violence and militant attitudes
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