It is known that an acute sense of fear turns on the mechanism of physiological arousal, thanks to which we prepare ourselves to either confront the threat or flee. However, due to ethical constraints, scientists have little opportunity to study the phenomenon of fear in more detail. However, California researchers have found a way out.
Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (USA), whose article In the magazine Psychological Science, solved this ethical problem by moving the place of the experiment from the laboratory to Perpetuum Penitentiary — an immersive (with the effect of presence) «terrible» prison attraction that promises visitors a personal meeting with brutal killers and sadists, as well as suffocation, execution and electric shock.
156 people agreed to take part in the experiment, who were paid to visit the attraction. Participants were divided into groups of eight to ten people. Before embarking on a journey through the “prison”, each of them told how many friends and strangers were in the same group as him, and also answered a number of questions.
In addition, people had to rate on a special scale how scared they were now and how scared they would be when they were inside. Then a wireless sensor was put on the wrist of each participant, which monitored the electrical conductivity of the skin. This indicator reflects the level of physiological arousal, in response to the release of sweat. After a half-hour journey through the cells of the immersive «prison», the participants reported on their feelings.
It turned out that, in general, people expected to experience more fear than they actually did. However, women, on average, were more afraid than men both before entering the attraction and inside it.
The researchers also found that people who experienced more fear inside the «prison» were more likely to experience sharp bursts of skin electrical conductivity. At the same time, which is quite expected, the unexpected threat provoked stronger bursts of physiological excitation than the predicted one.
Among other things, scientists planned to find out how the reaction to fear changes depending on who is nearby — friends or strangers. However, the exact answer to this question could not be found. The fact is that participants who had more friends in the group than strangers had an overall higher level of physiological arousal. This could be due to both strong fear and simply the fact that in the company of friends the participants were in an elevated, emotionally excited state.
The researchers also acknowledge that their experiment had a number of limitations that could have affected the results. First, the participants were selected from people who were pre-arranged for the ride and no doubt expected to enjoy it. Random people might react differently. In addition, the threats faced by the participants were obviously not real, and everything that happens is completely safe.