Negative emotion and trait emotional intelligence in reaction to terrorist attacks

Deadly terrorist attacks shook Europe and generated significant emotional turmoil well beyond people directly harmed. At the same time, large waves of immigrants are seeking help in many European countries. In this climate, we investigated how negative emotion elicited by terrorist attacks shapes estimates of future attacks, the perception of immigrants, and opinions toward immigration among respondents living in a small town in Northern Italy. We found that stronger negative emotion corresponded with the belief that future attacks would be more likely to occur in respondents' hometowns than in farther locations, with a greater tendency to see immigrants as threatening, and lower willingness to accept them. Importantly, we found that this pattern was more pronounced for individuals with low (vs. high) trait emotional intelligence.