'I'm Not Really Afraid of Osama Bin Laden!' Fear of Terrorism in Dutch Children

摘要

We examined to what extent children in The Netherlands are affected bythe threat of terrorism. For this purpose, a sample of school children living inRotterdam or adjacent satellites (N = 216) completed a fear survey that included anumber of terrorism-related items, and were confronted with ambiguous vignettes tomeasure threat-related interpretation bias. The results demonstrated that although anumber of terrorism-related items (i.e., bombing attacks, explosions in a bus orsubway) listed high in a ranking of most intense childhood fears, very few childrenmade terrorist-related interpretations of ambiguous situations.