This chapter addresses the question of how to create a database of the citizen’s
mind about anxiety-provoking situations in the face of terrorism. The approach is grounded
in a combination of experimental design, psychophysics (a branch of psychology) and
consumer research. The theoretical foundation is illustrated with a set of 15 empirical
studies using conjoint analysis in order to understand how consumers respond to anxietyprovoking
situations. The approach identifies the mind-set toward terrorism at the
individual respondent level. By exploring responses embedded in a general study of
anxiety-provoking situations, it becomes possible to understand the algebra of the
individual respondent’s mind, how important the basic fear of terrorism actually is, how
important it is to specify the type of terrorism (bombing versus contamination of the food
supply) and the structure of what frightens the consumer. The chapter attempts to answer
the question: what are the critical drivers of anxiety—the specific terrorist act, the location
of the act, the feelings, or even the proposed remedies to reduce anxiety? The outcome of
the research is both an empirical dataset and potentially a framework for a subdiscipline in
social science. This approach looks at problems from three perspectives: as a scientist—to
understand general patterns; as an engineer—to solve a specific problem; and as a clinical
psychologist—at the level of a single individual (idiographic) as well as at the level of the
general population (nomothetic).
Keywords: Social anxiety, rule developing experimentation, terrorism, reducing
anxiety.
