%0 Journal Article
%T In the wake of a terrorist attack, do Americans¡¯ attitudes toward Muslims decline?
%A Amber E. Boydstun
%A Jessica T. Feezell
%A Rebecca A. Glazier
%J Research & Politics
%@ 2053-1680
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/2053168018806391
%X When a terrorist attack occurs, a natural response may be increased public concern about terrorism. But when a self-described Muslim perpetrates a terrorist attack, do negative attitudes toward Muslims also increase? If so, is this effect conditional on the nature of people¡¯s past personal experiences with Muslims? We present natural experiment data based on a 2015 web-based survey of 2105 non-Muslims in the US, a survey that happened to span the terrorist attacks in Paris on 13 November and San Bernardino on 2 December. We thus test Americans¡¯ feelings toward Muslims immediately before and after both an international and a domestic terrorist attack. We find that, although the attacks significantly affected Americans¡¯ concerns about radicalism both in the US and abroad, they did not negatively affect Americans¡¯ thermometer feelings toward Muslims in the aggregate¡ªa null finding conditioned only slightly by the nature of past personal experiences with Muslims
%K Terrorism
%K public opinion
%K contact hypothesis
%K Muslim
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053168018806391