Fear of the Dark: How Terrorist Events Affect Trust in the Long Run

This paper examines the long-term effects of terrorism on general-ized trust at the global level. Using data from the Global TerrorismDatabase and the World Values Survey, we analyze a sample of approx-imately 210,000 individuals born between 1954 and 1993 and surveyedin 107 different countries from 1990 to 2020. We base our research onthe well-grounded psychological theories on the formation of humanbeliefs, attitudes or values, and we find robust evidence that exposureto terrorist events in the two essential stages of human development –adolescence and early adulthood – reduces trust in other people. Theformed values are persistent throughout life. These results are robustto several alternative specifications.