Terrorism and misperceptions: Evidence from Europe

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

Publication Date

2-1-2026

Abstract

How does exposure to Islamist terrorism change perceptions about Muslims and immigrants? We conducted a large-scale survey that measures misperceptions towards minority groups in four European countries. Our results show that terror attacks in the past increased misperceptions of the share of Muslims and immigrants. We also contend that this increase in misperceptions is particularly large and significant for lower-educated respondents and people from regions with a low share of the foreign population. Given that misperceptions are higher on average in regions with a large share of foreigners, terror attacks make misperceptions across different regions converge.

ISSN

0167-2681

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Volume

242

Disciplines

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Keywords

Attitude formation, Cognitive biases, Misperceptions, Prejudice, Public opinion, Terror attacks

Scopus ID

105027386090

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Hybrid: This publication is openly available in a subscription-based journal/series

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