Ninety-five upper-level undergraduate students took part in this experiment. We randomly
assigned the participants to the experimental conditions.
Design:
We used a between groups single factor design. The three treatment levels are: (a) thematic
relevance of the emotive trigger (terror bombing); (b) thematic irrelevance of the emotive trigger
(traffic accident); and (c) control group (no exposure to a video clip, though awareness of the
conflict and the terror threat in the area). The main dependent variables were the choice made by
the subjects, the level of confidence in the choice they make, and process parameters (the
number of items of information accessed and the time elapsed until a decision was reached).
Research Material and Treatments:
Decision Task and the Scenario: At the beginning of the experiment, we introduced to the
participants the task of making a choice of whether the US should evacuate all American
interests from the area or militarily target terror headquarters and infrastructures in the area in
response to the recent terrorist attacks in Israel targeting the US citizens and interests.
Then, all the participants read a brief about the new wave of terrorism in Israel and new
threats to the US in the Middle East. The scenario informed about the ongoing ethnic conflict
between Israelis and Palestinians that set the stage for the terror attacks, which initially targeted
only the members of these ethnic groups in conflict but now extended to Americans residing in
the area with their families. The story described harassments and kidnapping of Americans in
roadblocks, suicide-bombing attacks, and accordingly, increase in the number of American
civilian fatalities in the region. The scenario ended with the two policy recommendations that the
Department of State and the Department of Defense offer.
The Emotive Manipulations: One-third of the participants - in the terror-emotive condition-
viewed immediately after the written scenario a “newsbreak” -a video clip- that depicted the
consequences of a school-bus bombing that was providing transportation to American children to
an American school at the time of the suicide-bombing. Another one-third of the participants -
in the accident-emotive condition - saw the same video-clip with a different voice-over that
depicted the consequences of a traffic accident where a truck collided with a school bus that was
providing transportation to American children to an American school. The details of the bus
bombing and traffic accident incidents in terms of the victims involved, the number of casualties,
and the number and condition of the wounded, were kept as similar as possible. The control
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Convention