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This article
discusses the social, community, national, and international
psychological implications of the great energy and movement
in our country after the September 11 attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. To determine ways that applied
psychologists can have a positive effect on the crisis, Kurt
Lewin's (1948; 1951) concept of locomotion at community and
national levels is used to discuss the need for interventions
that will produce driving factors to continue movement toward
positive helping behaviors, and restraining factors when this
momentum leads to potentially dangerous responses to the conflict
(e.g., group think, an overextended enthusiasm for war, a
sense of psychological immediacy or nonimmediacy for victims,
and prejudice against Muslim individuals). The author offers
ten approaches that applied psychologists could use to drive,
restrain, and guide locomotion in this and similar crises
both in the United States and abroad.
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