HLS660 Psychology of Fear Management

This course serves as an introduction for homeland security professionals to terrorism as a psychological phenomenon. Government agencies involved in homeland security need to understand the psychological consequences of mass-casualty terrorist attacks and other disasters. This course provides a broad overview of psychological effects of terrorism; the status of and fallacies related to the interventions applied to victims of terrorism and the generalized fear and anxiety experienced by the public at large; current government strategies used to disseminate information to terrorist groups; psychological phenomena related to media coverage of terrorism; misconceptions and inaccuracies about the socio-political and religious motivations of terrorist groups; "profiling" and the typical psychological and cultural makeup of modern terrorists; and the social and cultural psychology of public conceptions of terrorists and acts of terror.

Corequisite

None

Credits

4

Distribution

Security Studies