Psychological Buffering for Disasters

America has a ready market for doomsayers. We are primed for fear. Politicians and religious extremists manipulate the public’s collective amygdala. So, is there any wonder why Americans seem more anxious and on edge? We advertise America’s vulnerabilities in congressional testimony, government reports, the news media, and a steady stream of books, as well as on the Internet. In the book, Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy Strengthening Ourselves, Brian Jenkins denotes that every imaginable scenario enters the popular culture, then circles back into government, where it inspires new concerns that prompt yet further intelligence inquiries. The inquiries themselves create an eager market for information about new threats — where there are buyers, there will be sellers — and some of the information will inevitably fan the initial fears that had prompted the inquiry. This circular conversation of fear and anxiety priming is wearing on the American public.

Terrorism has the potential for fostering fear, increasing anxiety, depression and hyper arousal, and manifest in mild to severe post-traumatic stress.

Fear is one of the biggest dangers we face. Fear can erode confidence in our institutions, provoke us to overreact and tempt us to abandon our values. There is nothing wrong with being afraid, but we have spent the past 14 years scaring the hell out of ourselves. We need to spend the next several years doing things very differently. First, we need to get more realistic about our risk. Secondly, we need to increase preparedness by educating and mobilizing all Americans to participate in the homeland security ecosystem.

It is still timely advice for us to heed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s advice in his 1933 inaugural address:

“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

Terrorists attempt to undermine our cultural, individual and group cohesion, so it makes sense to concentrate on those three elements for fostering resiliency. An overarching fear management theory that is a model to look at anxiety is the Anxiety Buffer Disruption Theory, or ABDT. Anxiety buffer disruption theory is an application of terror management theory to explain an individual’s reaction to a traumatic event, which can lead to post traumatic stress disorder. There are three buffers under the theory that can be utilized to mitigate against attacks on cultural, individual and group cohesion.

Cultural Buffer: The best way to increase our ability as a nation to respond to disasters, is to enlist all citizens through education and engagement, which also happens to be a very good way to reduce the persistent anxieties that afflict us. We have not done this. The American cultural identity infuses life with structure, purpose and meaning. We maintain this fragile construction by preferring the company of the like-minded Americans with the same cultural identity. But when faced with a traumatic event, there are times when terror and anxiety cannot be assimilated into the framework of the person’s existing cultural worldview. This in particular is why we need to incorporate citizens more into the conversation about threats to our homeland.

Individual Close Relationship Buffer: The ability to have individual relationships of support and feelings of related self-worth is an essential component of the existential anxiety- buffering system. As noted with veterans, PTSD is related to a breakdown in this system of self-esteem. According to ABDT this leaves this group particularly vulnerable to anxiety, since self-worth is an integral part of the individual’s anxiety- buffering mechanism.

Collective Close Relationship Buffer: Close relationships serve as a buffer to fear and anxiety. Love and belongingness are ranked over those of esteem and self-actualization. The formation and maintenance of close relationships have been recognized in both infants and adults as a source of regulating distress. It is also noted that self- esteem can also stem from close relationships. Based on these things it was assumed that formation and maintenance of close relationships may serve as a death- anxiety- buffering mechanism. Close relationships appear to have inoculating power against basic existential threats, which allows people to respond to these threats by fulfilling relationship potential. Second, it seems the sense of relationship commitment is shaped by not only perceived relationship investment, gains, and potential alternatives, as well as the existential need of denial of death awareness. Third, it seems processes of terror management not only include worldview defenses to protect the self, but also promote commitment to significant others and the expansion of the self, provided by these relationships.

Israel: Comparative Government Approach:

As a comparative government example, Israel has a long history of instilling all three anxiety buffers into its historical and ongoing resiliency efforts.

Basic Need for Security

All humans have a basic need to feel secure, no matter the country in which we live. In 1948, a psychologist named Henry Maslow wanted to understand what motivates people. He believed that individuals possess a set of motivational systems unrelated to rewards or unconscious desires. The motivation for security, safety and freedom from fear is second only to the physiological motivations for food and water. Understanding and creating an environment that fosters freedom from fear is essential in fostering a resilient public. This is key to the strategy of Israel. Over the past 50 years, the Israeli government has developed a variety of measures to prevent terrorist attacks or mitigate their effects. Israel has created a cutting-edge security industry that markets counterterrorism technologies, products, and services throughout the world. Israel understands that savvy people — more than technology, physical barriers or special tactics — are the critical weapon to wield against terrorists.

With a population in the millions and terrorist attack fatalities in the hundreds from 2000 to 2007, it would be rational for an Israeli citizen to reason that responsibility for his personal security could rest almost entirely on the backs of others. However, this is far from how Israel has decided to be resilient in the face of numerous dangers. Israel is well known for its high level of public involvement in security matters. It has been the target of hundreds of terrorist attacks over the past six decades, so the importance of its relatively small population taking an active role is readily apparent.

However, to assume that this level of citizen engagement is the natural, sociological result of a high-threat environment would be naive. Ever since Israel’s founding in 1948, the state of Israel has faced the threat of terror attacks from rejectionist organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah. Because these groups cannot defeat the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on the battlefield, they target Israeli citizens in an attempt to subvert the national will. According to Boaz Ganor, executive director of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliyya, terrorist violence aims “to undermine the personal security of civilians, to sow fear and trepidation, and to sap public morale” in order to pressure decision makers to make political concessions. It could be said that the goals of sowing fear and trepidation were identical to the terrorists who attacked the United States on 9/11. Israel has had a much longer time period of sociological adjustment to a culture of preparedness and personal responsibility for safety than the U.S. However, because Israel and the United States both face threats from Islamic extremists who are prepared to sacrifice their lives in carrying out attacks, many of the lessons learned by Israeli counterterrorism experts over the past 50 years are relevant to the current U.S. campaign against al-Qaeda.

Importance of Strengthening Psychological Coping Skills

One major difference between the psychological effects of natural disaster and terrorist attacks is that in a terrorist attack, the fear and anxiety produced is grossly disproportionate to the actual risk by terrorism. According to Boaz Ganor, the director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT) in Israel, the cognitive amplification of the threat, in turn, can cause a diminished sense of security, poor morale, and reduced confidence in the ability of citizens to survive and take care of themselves and their families in the case of an actual attack. This sense of fear and helplessness is apparently substantiated as citizens begin questioning their government’s capability to provide protection from terrorist attacks.

Understanding Public Resilience: Bending Rather Than Breaking

Resilience is a complex concept that involves individual and social constructs which leads to a socially construction of reality by words and actions. Jason Porter in his Master’s thesis from the Naval Postgraduate School, “Energizing the Enterprise: An Incentive Based Approach to Homeland Security,” notes that in Israel, homeland security and public resiliency is not just a task for the government: it is a way of life for the citizens. From a very early age, Israeli children are taught not only how to prepare for terrorist attacks, but that security is their civic responsibility as Israeli citizens. As they advance toward high school their homeland security education and training continue, and by the time they are adults, security has become second nature. As adults, Israelis assume proactive roles in providing security within their communities, as well as, imparting a security mindset to successive generations.

The Israeli government has made a deliberate effort to counter the demoralizing effects of terrorism by strengthening the psychological coping skills of ordinary citizens. Terrorists seek to invoke a pervasive fear in the civilian population by personalizing the threat so that everyone feels vulnerable, regardless of the statistical probability that a given individual will be affected. In an effort to counter this form of psychological warfare, Israeli terrorism experts from the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism visit schools throughout the country and provide educational programs tailored to students of different age groups. These lectures describe the motives and operational strategy of terrorists, with the aim of immunizing students against the personalization of terror. According to institute executive director Ganor, “Education directed towards familiarity with the phenomenon [of terrorism], in all its aspects, will lower the level of anxiety and foil one of the terrorists’ principal aims: to instill fear and undermine the personal security of civilians.”

The Israeli approach of involving every citizen in the fight against terrorism is an overwhelming task when you are dealing with almost 317 million people of the U.S, but it is not impossible. The literature suggests citizen preparedness and education must be approached from an empowering perspective, as it is in Israel. According to reporter and author Siobhan Gorman, applying lessons learned from Israel will not be effective until we recognize that terrorism is psychological warfare and one of the best responses may to be gradually become less afraid of it. Since 9/11, the federal government and the media have often acted as if terrorism poses threats unlike anything this nation has seen before. But treating terrorism as terrifyingly different from other threats to American lives, health, and financial well-being has, arguably, made future terror attacks more difficult to prevent and to recover from. Israel demonstrates how a country’s populace can simultaneously adjust to the dangers of terrorism and bolster security on the home front.

Israel’s Long-term Strategy for a Culture of Preparedness

Culture is the ability to store, exchange, and improve ideas. This vast cooperative system has always been one of resiliency’s largest engines. At the end of the 20th Century, an estimated 66.5 million children each year were affected by a disaster, and this number will most likely increase, owing to shifts within society and large climate changes. It is evident and imperative that more action be undertaken to ensure the proper education of American children so that they are aware of what to do in the event of any disaster, regardless of its magnitude and scale. On the eve of the Gulf War in 1990, many countries came to realize that the war had moved from the battlefront to the home front. In Israel, the primary threat is from a missile or rocket attack. Children make up about a third of the population in Israel. Elementary-school children there learn about chemical and biological weapons and how to use a gas mask. The Israeli government runs TV spots advising people how to keep an eye out for explosives in public places.

The Home Front Command, together with the Ministry of Education implement a program called “Educating for Emergency.” The 4–6 hour instruction program is intended for various ages and is taught according to age groups in the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and 11th grade. The program is taught by the class teachers who have special training, based on the assumption that during an emergency it will be the teacher who will lead his/her class and who will be the natural “focal point” for them. Israeli students in the 5th grade learn a broader program comprised of 10 hours of instruction that is taught by trained emergency counselors. Knowledge can lessen anxiety in a disaster. Armed with knowledge of what is likely to happen in a language geared toward their developmental age, children feel empowered. In Israel, children fulfill the role of change agents and ambassadors within their families facilitating the desired behaviors during a crisis. A culture of preparedness is fostered at an early age by the educational and systematic teaching of various threats. Programs initially examine threats locally and then are generalized to the wider environment and subject matter. Additionally, as children grow older, Israel mandates three years of military service from every 18-year-old male and female non-Arab citizen. As one response center supervisor puts it, “Bulletproof vehicles aren’t enough here. You need people to respond.”

Angi English has a Master’s in Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security and a Master’s in Educational Psychology from Baylor University. She lives in Austin, Texas.