If the goal of the terrorists who planned and carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was to slash away at the nation’s sense of itself and its confidence in government, those were two targets the suicide hijackers clearly missed.
From an unprecedented planting of death and havoc, the nation is reaping an unexpected harvest of patriotism, compassion and unity unseen in the United States in decades, even though the attacks shook the country to its foundation and left much of its population confused, in shock and weeping.
A new nationwide study, the National Disaster Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, questioned 502 people in Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall and Will Counties, as part of a larger national project that will be released later.
The report was obtained exclusively by the Tribune.
The survey uncovered profound physiological responses, an outpouring of patriotism and national pride across the political spectrum, and rocketing support for government institutions, particularly the military.
President Bush, in his news conference Thursday, was not exaggerating when he said good character and strong citizenship had blossomed in the ruins.
“We have shown great love for our country and great tolerance and respect for all our countrymen,” the president said.
The results on one question alone seem to reflect the president’s assessment.
In the first moments after the attack, when the images of the burning World Trade Center were spreading across the nation, the first response from 84 percent of the people questioned in the Chicago area was prayer.
People told the university surveyors that they prayed for peace, for the victims and their families, and for help in finding out who was responsible for the attack. As that strong spiritual response played out, it was soon replaced by anger, particularly anger attached to concerns about personal safety.
If more than 8 in 10 Chicago-area residents turned to a higher spiritual power, many of them, 72 percent, also said they felt a “deep anger” about the event. About one-third of those questioned said they were “deeply concerned” about their personal safety, while 52 percent said they were worried about how terrorism might affect their own lives.
Many people felt a need to talk to others about the attack. More than 74 percent phoned, e-mailed or talked to someone just after they heard the news. Sixty percent said they contacted up to six people. Thirty-one percent said they contacted as many as 20 people.
About 15 percent of the respondents in the Chicago part of the survey said they avoided government buildings after the attack. Of the 55 percent who said they were not able to carry on their daily duties as usual, most said they watched television or listened to the radio instead.
How people cope
The responses in the survey, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and the Chicago Tribune, reached beyond the standard measurements in common polling data.
They present a picture not only of how people felt immediately after the attack, but also what they did to cope with waves of anxiety, fear and depression sparked by the unavoidable media focus on the disaster.
Almost 10 percent of the people questioned in the Chicago area said they felt like getting drunk after the attack. In the rest of the United States, feeling like getting drunk was a response of just 6.4 percent.
The Chicago-area results will be followed by the release of complete national responses, based on questions asked of 2,100 people, and survey responses from New York and Washington in about a week, according to the university center, one of the nation’s most respected social science institutions and the source of a landmark national survey that followed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The data show a powerful, patriotic reaction in the days after the attack, reflected in Chicago and its suburbs as well as across the nation. Given the historical adage that nations tend to unite when attacked by external enemies, that reaction might have been anticipated.
Asked whether they would rather be citizens of any other country in the world, 97 percent of the residents of the Chicago area agreed with the statement that they would rather be citizens of the United States than of anyplace else.
Confidence in the military, the survey showed, registered a striking increase.
Last year, the General Social Survey estimated only 40 percent of the people in the nation and 34 percent in the 12 largest metropolitan areas expressed a great deal of confidence in the military. After the attack, 72 percent of the people in the Chicago area and 77.9 percent of the nation as a whole expressed a great deal of confidence in the nation’s military.
The part of the survey that focuses on emotional reactions is particularly revealing and somewhat surprising.
A third of the respondents in the Chicago area reported they were so “dazed and confused” when they heard about the attack that they did not know how to feel, a reaction that apparently swept the nation.
Only the people of New York were more profoundly affected. Almost half of them said they did not know how to feel.
As elsewhere in the nation, Chicago and its suburbs reacted with compassion once the shock had dissipated.
While 13 percent of the respondents in the Chicago area began to stockpile food, gasoline or other necessities after the attack, the charitable response was much stronger.
Almost 55 percent of Chicagoans reported giving to charity after the attack, about 10 percent more than the national number. Chicagoans, in fact, contributed as heavily as people who lived in New York, the survey shows.
Some 24 percent of Chicago-area residents reported giving blood, about the same as the national number, but much lower than the 35.5 percent who said they donated blood in New York.
Asked to compare their feelings after the attack with feelings about other experiences in their lives, almost half of Chicago-area residents said they remembered other times when they had the same feelings. Some examples included the death of family members, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Persian Gulf war, the assassination of President Kennedy and the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Physical response
The reactions reached far beyond emotion.
Ninety-five percent of the people questioned in the Chicago region said they experienced strong physical reactions when they heard of the terrorist attack, responses that make it clear that the assault felt close to home, even though it happened hundreds of miles away in lower Manhattan or at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va.
Almost three of every four people reported weeping, the most common physiological response.
After crying, the second most common response was a feeling of nervousness or tension.
Almost half had trouble sleeping, just ahead of the 45.4 percent who said they felt “dazed and numb.”
About a third said they felt more tired than usual.
One in three said they had upset stomachs.
Almost a third reported loss of appetite.
One in five said they had headaches, while about the same number said they had trouble controlling their temper.
Seventeen percent said they smoked more.
About the same number had trouble with forgetfulness. Some 16.8 percent said they experienced rapid heartbeat. About 1 in 20 said they felt dizzy. About the same number reported sweaty hands.
All of these reports of clear signs of emotional response to the terrorist attack ranked Chicago alongside the rest of the nation, excluding New York and Washington.
The average number of symptoms experienced by Chicago-area residents was 4.3. In New York, the average number of symptoms was 5.2.
However, when the survey specialists looked closely at the results, they found that many more Chicagoans reported crying in response to the attack than people in the rest of the country. Just under 60 percent of the respondents in the national survey reported crying, while 72.2 percent reported that, in Chicago, the catastrophe drew tears.
Health not a factor
The reactions were about the same for everyone regardless of their health, which allowed the researchers to rule out bad health as the cause of the symptoms, which can be common to many psychological conditions and diseases.
Some differences were noticed in the responses of men and women in the Chicago-area results.
Women reported suffering more symptoms than men, with men saying they had 3.2 symptoms and women reporting they had 5.1 symptoms. Higher percentages of women reported loss of appetite, feeling nervous or tense, feeling more tired, feeling dizzy, feeling dazed or numb, or forgetting things.
In these statistics, too, researchers were able to rule out bad health as a possible cause of the reactions.
There were concerns here, and across the nation, that the attack would have a deleterious effect on American politics. About a third of the people here, and roughly the same number across the nation, said they “worried deeply” about the effect of the attack on politics in the U.S.
Thirteen percent of those questioned around the country, but 15 percent of those questioned in the Chicago area, reported they were “deeply concerned” that the United States was in some way responsible for the attack.
The survey was conducted between Sept. 13 and Sept. 27. The surveyors noted there was some decline in emotion as time passed.
The margin of error for the Chicago part of the survey is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
