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cultures pose special problems that need to be recognized and dealt with in all efforts to encpurage positive, constructive behavior.? In this report, however, we have dealt mainly with what we ¢stimate will
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be the average reaction of the American people.
The Panel’s Approach
In preparing“ourselves to arrive at the required judgments, we have held several meetin S in order to
achieve a cominon understanding of the assignment, to be briefed on pertinent undertakings which have
a particularly close bearing on our task, and to exchange viewpoints stemming from our geveral backgrounds and disciplines.
Wehave hada briefing on nuclear weaponseffects by Mr. Harold Goodwin, Consultayft to the Federal Civil Defense Administrator and Director of Atomic Test Operations for FCDA. In thjs connection,
we were also fortunate in having on our Panel Dr. Stafford Warren, whose experience in thi specific field
dates from his early participation in the Manhattan Project and includes service in Joint Task Force One
and National Test Site Field Operations.
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We were also fortunate in being able to call on another member of our group—Genfral Benjamin
Chidlaw, former Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Air Defense Command—for a bfiefing on our
air defense system.
A significant amount of data has been accumulated on human behavior understresy by the Committee on Disaster Studies of the National Research Council.
Dr. Irving Janis of Yale University, a mem-
ber of that Committee, and Mr. Harry Williams, its executive secretary, provided for us afvery valuable
summation of their experience as well as copies of several specific disaster studies compl@ted under the
Committee’s auspices. A further valuable resource that has been repeatedly drawn on wasjthe experience
of two Panel members on the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey following World WarII.
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The Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan has been conducting fqr the past five.
years, for the Federal Civil Defense Administration, a series of surveys of public attitudes And knowledge 6)
on civil defense, including knowledgeof the effects of nuclear weapons. The high points offthis experience _
were summarized for us in a briefing by Dr. Stephen Withey of the staff of the Center. Here again, we
were able to draw continually on this background through the presence on the Panel of Dy. Rensis Likert,
Director of the Institute for Social Research, of which the Survey Research Center is a part.
Finally, we were given an informal but important briefing on morale components by qnother member
of the Panel, Dr. Alexander H. Leighton, whose experience in the Foreign Morale Analysig Division of the
Office of War Information is treated in his book Human Relations in a Changing World.
In addition to the briefings, we have had available to us an imposing library of pertinent reports,
reprints and publications bearing on virtually all phases of our assignment.
moe
It may be valuable to add a word ontheeffect of this total experience on the members of the Panel.
At the outset, we were a group of individuals, largely unknownto each other except by
tation. Roughly a fourth of us had been closely identified in the past with certain phasqs
professional repu-
of the national
security program; the rest had had little more exposure to it and contact with it thanfhas the average
citizen. We have recognized among ourselves that through the process of being given job to do—one
which seems to us important—, of having successfully conveyed to us significant knowfedge bearing on
the problem, and of having participated in a series of group discussions leading to judgments and convictions as to desirable courses of action, we have become thoroughly “involved.” As oe member of the
group put it, ‘““We shall never be the same again!”
This was a predictable humanreaction. As individuals, however, we have experignced a degree of
identification with the group and with the task that has been surprising. The pointinfall this is to illustrate with a specific example the importance of “involvement,” which we shall discuss{more fully in the
main body of the report.
® Reflection on the probable differences in reaction on the part of the Puerto Ricans, Czechs, Hinns, Poles, SpanishAmericans, etc., in varying degrees of assimilation into their communities, will illustrate the complexities of the problem.
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