Shankar Vedantam notes that, in the face of tragedy, the ‘Whodunit’ question often guides our moral reasoning:
When a tragedy occurs, we instantly ask who or what caused it. When we find a human hand behind the tragedy — such as terrorists, in the case of the Mumbai attacks — something clicks in our minds that makes the tragedy seem worse than if it had been caused by an act of nature, disease or even human apathy.
Comparing our “out of proportion” political reactions to the small numbers of deaths from highly visible terrorist attacks to our reactions to fires and car accidents may point out that we have a bad-guy bias — or it might simply point out an important difference between fighting thinking, human foes and fighting uncaring forces.
If you successfully defend against attacks, your enemies might choose not to mount more attacks.