Fear affects us physically

Tashjian and colleagues studied what happens to us when we’re in a scary place (for this project, a haunted house with 17 rooms) and the social nature of fear-type responses.  They share that “Threats elicit physiological responses, the frequency and intensity of which have implications for survival. Ethical and practical limitations on human laboratory manipulations present barriers to studying immersive threat. . . . The current . . . study measured electrodermal [on skin electrical] activity in 156 adults while they participated in small groups [composed of friends and strangers] in a 30-min haunted-house experience involving various immersive threats. Results revealed positive associations between . . .friends and tonic [persistent] arousal, (b) unexpected attacks and phasic [transitory, fleeting] activity . . . Findings demonstrate the relevance of (a) social dynamics (friends vs. strangers) for tonic arousal and (b) subjective fear and threat predictability for phasic arousal.”

So, the more friends around the greater our physical responses to “threats” encountered.   Also, unexpected scary events  get us to jump higher, they produce more intense responses than more predictable ones.

Sarah Tashjian, Virginia Fedrigo, Tanaz Molapur, Dean Mobbs, and Colin Camerer.  “Physiological Responses to a Haunted-House Threat Experience:  Distinct Tonic and Phasic Effects.”  Psychological Science, in press, https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211032231