On the morning of July 7, 2005, at 8:30 AM, four men disembarked from a train in London. Seventy-seven minutes later, they were dead—along with 52 others on the bus and underground trains where the men detonated themselves. Another 770 people were injured in the suicide attacks targeting London’s rush-hour commuters.
Acts like these aim to spread fear and terror, shaking a society to its core. However, social scientists disagree on whether they actually achieve this goal.
Some argue that such events destabilize people, breed mistrust, and lead to fear-driven consequences like hatred, xenophobia, and authoritarian ideas. In short: democracy itself is at risk. Others counter that societies, particularly in Europe, are highly resilient. Scientific studies support this view—albeit with some caveats.
Terrorism is a relatively new area of research, emerging after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. During these attacks, perpetrators hijacked planes, including two that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, killing 2,977 people. Since then, the effects of terrorism on society have been empirically examined.
In the two decades since the World Trade Center attacks, over 200 studies have been published on the topic. A comprehensive meta-analysis was published in 2022 in the journal American Journal of Political Science. It synthesized data from surveys of over 400,000 individuals.
The studies focus on the attitudes and opinions in the Western world, particularly in Europe and the United States. While terrorism occurs far more frequently outside the West, it has been studied very little there. It is therefore quite possible that its effects outside the Western world are entirely different.
What is certain is that a terrorist attack profoundly affects people, evoking emotions like anger, sadness, and disgust in the immediate aftermath. The more someone knows about an attack, the stronger these reactions tend to be. However, the impact begins to fade within weeks, if not days.
The Norwegian meta-analysis, the most comprehensive study in this field, sought to determine whether terrorist attacks also change public attitudes. The study concluded that Islamist terror has influenced how people in the United States perceive their government and vote. However, this influence was minimal and has diminished as the events of 9/11 recede into the past.
Mistrust toward minorities and concerns about personal safety did increase. On a scale from 0 to 100, attitudes shifted by about 7 points on average after a terrorist attack. Social science studies rarely show strong effects, but even by those standards, this impact is minimal.
According to the Global Terrorism Database, Europe also experienced a significant number of terrorist attacks between 2002 and 2018, though only a small proportion were fatal. The London bombings and the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo—in which 12 people were killed and 11 injured—are tragic examples.
The responses of the British public are among the best-studied, thanks to the British Election Study, which has surveyed the population regularly for 60 years. The country experienced further terrorist incidents after the London bombings. In 2007, several people were injured when terrorists detonated a car bomb at Glasgow Airport. In 2013, British soldier Lee Rigby was murdered by two Islamist terrorists.
Researchers examined the British Election Study data retrospectively to identify the impact of these terrorist attacks on public opinion. They found that the London bombings, in particular, deeply unsettled and emotionally affected people. The sense of insecurity was still measurable nearly five months later, according to findings published in the British Journal of Political Science. However, the analysts did not explore how this insecurity influenced voting behavior.
It is conceivable that after a terrorist attack, people rally around their government and support measures aimed at preventing future attacks. In fact, researchers analyzing the European Social Survey in 2023 found that trust in government increased among respondents after a terrorist attack.
What might seem contradictory at first glance is explained by sociologists as the “rally ’round the flag” effect. In times of crisis, people tend to support those who promise security. Indeed, an individual citizen can do little against terrorism and must rely on government agencies to respond effectively.
However, the European Social Survey found no significant changes in attitudes toward immigration or minorities, nor in voting behavior.
It remains an open question whether such shifts might only become measurable over the long term if political actors continually remind people of past terrorist events. So far, however, terrorists appear to have failed in their efforts to induce lasting change in the Western world through their actions.
