Spontaneous concern About Nuclear War by College Students

The issue of nuclear war and its prevention through either a strong military and deterrence or a nuclear weapons freeze and arms reduction has been discussed extensively in the media with a parallel resurgence of this topic in the psychological literature. The purpose of the present study is to add to this professional literature by studying the concerns of persons from non-urban areas. Undergraduates at a small college in the Pacific Northwest volunteered to complete the study during their regular class time in an introductory psychology class. Only 13% of the participants grew up in towns with populations larger than 40,000, and nearly half grew up in towns with populations smaller than 10,000. In response to five presentations each of "I worry about …" and "My greatest fear regarding the future …", one half of all the participants mentioned nuclear war, nuclear bombs, or some related term at least once. Demographic data concerning age, marital status, sex, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, and religious background were used in a stepwise regression analysis to predict spontaneous concern about nuclear war. Sex and how religious a person described himself or herself to be were the only significant predictors. Because of a low R value, the results of the regression analysis should be interpreted tentatively.