Bruce Schneier talks about a paper explaining why terrorism seldom achieves its aims:
This is an example of correspondent inference theory. People tend to infer the motives — and also the disposition — of someone who performs an action based on the effects of his actions, and not on external or situational factors. If you see someone violently hitting someone else, you assume it’s because he wanted to — and is a violent person — and not because he’s play-acting. If you read about someone getting into a car accident, you assume it’s because he’s a bad driver and not because he was simply unlucky. And — more importantly for this column — if you read about a terrorist, you assume that terrorism is his ultimate goal.[…]
But like all cognitive biases, correspondent inference theory fails sometimes. And one place it fails pretty spectacularly is in our response to terrorism. Because terrorism often results in the horrific deaths of innocents, we mistakenly infer that the horrific deaths of innocents is the primary motivation of the terrorist, and not the means to a different end.[…]
In other words, terrorism doesn’t work, because it makes people less likely to acquiesce to the terrorists’ demands, no matter how limited they might be. The reaction to terrorism has an effect completely opposite to what the terrorists want; people simply don’t believe those limited demands are the actual demands.
Interesting stuff, despite the commentators who think the IRA won in Northern Ireland, however Bruce’s comments miss something important: the same cognitive processes apply to US/”Western” actions as well.
For example: when people see the US invade Iraq, put in place a puppet government and kill hundreds of thousands of people they believe that that was the aim, not defusing a threat from Evil Saddam or whatever confluence of local political, personal and business interests actually led to the decision to invade. And they won’t believe whatever explanations or “limited aims” you put forward.
