%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