Abstract
Fear is an evolutionary adaption to a hazardous environment, linked to numerous complex behavioral responses, e.g., the fight-or-flight response, suiting their respective environment. However, for the sake of experimental control, fear is mainly investigated under rather artificial laboratory conditions. The latter transform these evolutionary adaptions into artificial responses, like keystrokes. The immersive, multidimensional character of virtual reality (VR) enables realistic behavioral responses, overcoming aforementioned limitations. To investigate authentic fear responses from a holistic perspective, participants explored either a negative or a neutral VR cave. To promote real-life behavior, we built a physical replica of the cave, providing haptic sensations. Electrophysiological correlates of fear-related approach and avoidance tendencies, i.e., frontal alpha asymmetries (FAA) were evaluated. To our knowledge, this is the first study to simultaneously capture complex behavior and associated electrophysiological correlates under highly immersive conditions. Participants in the negative condition exhibited a broad spectrum of realistic fear behavior and reported intense negative affect as opposed to participants in the neutral condition. Despite these affective and behavioral differences, the groups could not be distinguished based on the FAAs for the greater part of the cave exploration. Taking the specific behavioral responses into account, the obtained FAAs could not be reconciled with well-known FAA models. Consequently, putting laboratory-based models to the test under realistic conditions shows that they may not unrestrictedly predict realistic behavior. As the VR environment facilitated non-mediated and realistic emotional and behavioral responses, our results demonstrate VR’s high potential to increase the ecological validity of scientific findings (video abstract:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qROsPOp87l4&feature=youtu.be).
Highlights
The most salient stimuli that instantly draw attention are biologically relevant stimuli ensuring survival: nutrition, reproduction, and physical dangers (Carretié et al, 2012; Carboni et al, 2017)
All variables were tested for normal distribution regarding each group separately using the Shapiro-Wilk test and all further statistical tests were chosen
No group differed significantly from others in personality traits that otherwise might have an impact on the perception of and reactions to the specific virtual reality (VR) scenario, such as anxiety, empathy, paranormal belief, behavioral activation system, and behavioral inhibition system (all Hs(2) < 5.10, p > 0.05; see Supplementary Material S2 for details), as well as sensation seeking (F (2,74) 3.05, p 0.053)
Summary
The most salient stimuli that instantly draw attention are biologically relevant stimuli ensuring survival: nutrition, reproduction, and physical dangers (Carretié et al, 2012; Carboni et al, 2017). Non-clinical applications of BATs broadly rely on finite response options and stimuli, such as pressing a key or pulling a joystick to indicate the urge to avoid or approach an aversive stimulus (e.g., Heuer et al, 2007; Hofmann et al, 2009; Krieglmeyer and Deutsch, 2010) These rather artificial setups neglect that fear is a multidimensional response to a holistic environment and associated with complex behavioral programs, such as the fight-or-flight response to immediate threat (e.g., Cannon, 1929; Lynch and Martins, 2015; Teatero and Penney, 2015)
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