The Underwood Project: A Virtual Environment for Eliciting Ambiguous Threat

Cade Andrew McCall; Guy  Schofield; Darel Halgarth; Georgina Blyth; Aaron Laycock; Daniela Palombo

doi:10.3758/s13428-022-02002-3

The Underwood Project: A Virtual Environment for Eliciting Ambiguous Threat

Cade Andrew McCall, Guy Schofield, Darel Halgarth, Georgina Blyth, Aaron Laycock, Daniela Palombo

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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 environment as creepy and unpredictable. Their subjective and physiological response to the world rose and fell in line with the presentation of ambiguously threatening ambient cues. Exploratory analyses further suggest that this ambiguously threatening experience influenced memory for the virtual world and its underlying narrative. Together the data demonstrate that naturalistic virtual worlds can effectively elicit a multifaceted experience of ambiguous threat with subjective and cognitive consequences.

Original language	English
Number of pages	16
Journal	Behavior research methods
Early online date	26 Oct 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-02002-3
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 26 Oct 2022

Bibliographical note

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10.3758/s13428-022-02002-3Licence: CC BY

McCall_et_al-2022-Behavior_Research_Methods
© The Author(s) 2022
Final published version, 1.36 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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AU - Laycock, Aaron

AU - Palombo, Daniela

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