The horrific terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, left an
indelible mark on perceptions of security and threat across the world. This paper
uses Schwartz’s (1992) value circumplex model to examine value change across
matched high school and university student samples in Finland, questioned before
and after the World Trade Center (WTC) and associated attacks. In Study 1
(N5419), security values of adolescents were higher the day following the WTC
attacks than before, but fell back toward pre-attack levels in the subsequent two
samples. In contrast, levels of stimulation were lower following the terrorist
incidents. In Study 2 (N5222), security levels of students were also higher following
the WTC attacks, but again were closer to pre-attack levels in a subsequent
cohort
