The underwood project: A virtual environment for eliciting ambiguous threat.

ABSTRACT: Threatening environments can be unpredictable in many different ways. The nature of threats, their timing, and their locations in a scene can all be uncertain, even when one is acutely aware of being at risk. Prior research demonstrates that both temporal unpredictability and spatial uncertainty of threats elicit a distinctly anxious psychological response. In the paradigm presented here, we further explore other facets of ambiguous threat via an environment in which there are no concrete threats, predictable or otherwise, but which nevertheless elicits a building sense of danger. By incorporating both psychological research and principles of emotional game design, we constructed this world and then tested its effects in three studies. In line with our goals, participants experienced the e

SUBMITTER: McCall C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10700233 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature