Question

6) A graduate student wanted to investigate the role that temporal ambiguity in the onset of a fear-inducing stimulus had on the experience of fear. He recruited undergraduates to watch a segment of a horror movie. However, he edited the segment of the horror movie shown such that the time between the first cue that a “frightening” event was to take place and the occurrence of the frightening event was temporally predictable or unpredictable. Specifically, in the predictable condition, the time between cue and occurrence for each event was always 8 seconds; in the unpredictable condition, the time between cue and occurrence for each event ranged anywhere from 2 seconds to 14 seconds. There were six “frightening” events in the clip shown. The segment was 15 minutes in length. Twenty-five students were randomly assigned to be in the temporally predictable condition and 25 were randomly assigned to the temporally-unpredictable condition. He also randomly assigned 25 undergraduates to a control condition where they watched a 15 minute segment of a movie that was not fear-inducing to ensure that the horror movie actually was significantly more fear-inducing than a movie that was not in the horror genre. At the end of the movie segment, each participant was asked to rate how “frightening” they found the movie segment overall on a scale from 1 (not frightening at all) to 10 (extremely frightening). IV(s): Levels of IV(s): DV(s):

Answer 1

• The movie segment that was part of non horror movie cannot induce the fear stimulus hence the student group assigned to this segmwnt rated the movie to be of 0 level on frightening scale.
• Movie segment where the horror events were timed every 9 sec period would rate the horror segment between 7/8-10. It so because the director has given them a proper time to settle down the horror cue, sink into the sinister music and wait for the horror sequence. Also periodic setting of the cue and occurence enables the viewer to reset there stimulus into normal before the next horror sequence. Hence they end up loving the horror movie. Hence scale it 7-10 on frightening scale.
• When the cue and occurrence of horror event is not timed periodically, viewer would rate it between 2-6 on scale. Also it may range anywhere between 2-14 sec, ruining the horror experience. It is so because when time period is 2 sec then there's not enough time for viewer to set his mood for horror. Hence the event is not that effective. Also when period is 14 sec the viewer has been waiting for tje horror event for quite some time now and hence the affect of the sequence is greatly decreased. Moreover umtimely period would just make him judge the direction to be novice level. Hence he would rate the movie between 2-6 on frightening scale.