The Medical Implications of Nuclear War (1986) / Chapter Skim
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21 Adult Beliefs, Feelings, and Actions Regarding Nuclear War: Evidence from Surveys and Experiments
21 Adult Beliefs, Feelings, and Actions Regarding Nuclear War: Evidence from Surveys and Experiments
Pages 444-466
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National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. Adult Beliefs' Feelings' and Actions Regarding Nuclear War: Evidence from Surveys and Experiments SUSAN T
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Beliefs include conceptions of the likelihood of nuclear war, images of mushroom clouds and utter destruction, and expectations about one's own survival. People's feelings, for these purposes, consist of their reported emotional reactions and their nuclear policy preferences.
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First, material destruction is described more than human destruction, and second, abstract content outweighs concrete content. This primary emphasis on the material and abstract, rather than on concrete human devastation, is in marked contrast to the descriptions of Hiroshima survivors, who focus almost entirely on the human misery (e.g., Lifton, 1968; Thurlow, 1982; Time, 1985a)
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Of course, although these data provide an intimate view of a few people's concrete images, it is not clear that these people are typical of the larger public who are not artists, or who do not seek out a therapist known to be a peace activist, or who are not themselves prominent peace activists. People with nuclear war images oriented toward the concrete and the human may well be exceptional.
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MODAL FEELINGS ABOUT NUCLEAR WAR People worry seldom, but they overwhelmingly favor a mutual nuclear freeze. The beliefs people commonly report about a nuclear holocaust are bleak, which implies that people should also report some concomitant emotional reactions.
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One commonly suggested possibility is that people cope emotionally with the threat of nuclear war in different ways. Some preliminary survey evidence indicates that people take distinct cognitive and emotional stances that range from romanticist to hedonist to fatalist to deterrentist to disarmist and that their emotional reactions van accordingly (Hamilton et al., 1985a)
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Nevertheless, the best current evidence indicates that, although people report concern when asked, for most people, most of the time, the issue is not emotionally central. People's feelings about nuclear war emerge more dramatically, however, in their policy preferences.
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MODAL ACTIONS REGARDING NUCLEAR WAR Most people do nothing. The typical person does not act in any way that goes beyond voicing support for the policy of a nuclear freeze.
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Moreover, they are limited to nuclear policy attitudes' so the data do not describe the sources of people's more emotional responses, their beliefs, or their actions. As with most political attitudes, one might expect that the parents primarily socialize the child (Kinder and Sears, 1985)
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Consider each effect in turn.4 The Hiroshima-Nagasaki: 1945 study concluded that the film sensitized people to the issues of nuclear war. The Day After studies concluded similarly that the movie made nuclear war issues highly salient.
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Presumably, the movie was designed primarily to increase the salience of people's concrete images, as are other persuasive attempts to bring nuclear war home to people. Many observers also expected the movie to influence people's feelings their emotions and nuclear policy preferences.
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In addition to its effects on people's emotions, some observers expected The Day After to change people's policy preferences, as if to make them instant pacifists. Despite unprecedented preshowing fuss by the network, administration officials, news magazines, antinuclear groups, prodefense groups, therapists, and educators, the movie had no measurable impact on people's nuclear policy preferences.
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Consistent with the aims of antinuclear groups' efforts to make people's images of nuclear war concrete, salient concrete images were indeed associated with antinuclear action, in this event, as is true in general (Fiske et al., 1983; Milburn and Watanabe, 1985; note that the latter researchers suggest that both concrete and abstract images may be associated with antinuclear action)
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Factors that motivate antinuclear protest centrally include an extreme chronic salience of the issue and an unusual sense of political efficacy, as well as some attitudinal and demographic factors. Chronic personal salience clearly distinguishes the activist.
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Not surprisingly, considering their strong sense of political efficacy, antinuclear activists tend to participate in other types of political activities as well (Fiske et al., 1983; Milburn and Watanabe, 1985; Oskamp et al., 1984~. Note that although activists believe nuclear war is preventable, they do not believe it is survivable (Tyler and McGraw, 19831.
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To summarize, antinuclear activists are distinguished by the chronic salience of the issue and their consequently concrete, detailed images. They are also distinctive by virtue of their political efficacy, in the sense that they believe nuclear war is preventable but not survivable.
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CONCLUSION Decades ago psychologists anticipated people's fears about the bomb; they initially worked to assuage these fears, to promote public trust in the atomic experts, and to examine civil defense from a psychological perspective (Morowski and Goldstein, 1985~. But these efforts soon tapered off as it became clear that, surprisingly, the ordinary person was apparently less concerned than the researchers expected.
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The ordinary person does not possess the antinuclear activist's sense of political efficacy, does not believe that nuclear war is preventable by citizen actions. And, according to some analysts, people are right about this: the activity of one ordinary person hardly makes a difference.
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Because most people in the United States report that nuclear war creates worry, fear, and sadness when they think about it, and because most people support a mutual freeze, it seems likely that the effect of continued activity, on the part of some, makes the issue salient for everyone. Keeping the issue salient is likely to accentuate people's existing worry and their preference for a mutual nuclear freeze.
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will note that the most likely relationship of the two concepts here is that increasing the vividness of people's concrete images apparently contributed to the salience of the nuclear war issue, see Fiske and Taylor (1984) for further discussion of these two concepts.
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1983. The threat of nuclear war and the nuclear arms race: Adolescent experience and perceptions.
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1981. Psychosocial effects of the nuclear arms race.
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Paper presented at the 92nd annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Schofield, J., and M
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