Alfred Hitchcock said, “There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” Movies often build suspense by making the audience aware that something terrible will happen, but not when. How does uncertainty increase our anxiety?
A recent paper in Computational Psychiatry by researchers at UC Davis explores this. Drew Fox, associate professor of psychology at UC Davis, explains that not knowing when something will happen causes anxiety. He emphasizes the need to define “uncertainty” more precisely to address this issue.
Fox and graduate student Dan Holley found that how we perceive danger changes based on how a situation is set up, even if the chance of something terrible happening is the same. For instance, if there’s a 10-second countdown to an electric shock, the perceived danger is low until the countdown ends. However, the perceived danger would increase over time if the shock could happen anytime within those 10 seconds.
Fox explained, “If you know something is going to happen, the perceived danger increases as time passes because it didn’t happen earlier. The danger feels greater when you don’t know exactly when it will happen.”
Holley and Fox, Professor Erie Boorman, and graduate student Erica Varga experimented to test their idea. Volunteers earned a small cash reward (1 cent per second) for staying in a virtual environment. However, they risked a mild electric shock unless they chose to leave. They discovered that anxiety was driven by the perceived danger (hazard rate) rather than the chance of getting shocked.
At each experimental time point, the perceived danger (hazard rate) closely matched participants’ behavior, while the actual threat probability had no effect. Volunteers also felt more anxious in situations with higher hazard rates.
Holley explained that “our brains likely evolved to track rising danger levels. Imagine a gazelle on the Serengeti. It can keep grazing longer, increasing the risk of a lion attack. The longer a gazelle grazes, the more danger it faces. Its mind must track this increasing danger and adjust its behavior.”
By studying “uncertainty” in anxiety-inducing situations, the researchers aim to understand better fear and anxiety.
The study concludes that uncertainty increases anxiety because our brains are wired to track rising danger. We feel more anxious when we don’t know precisely when something terrible will happen. Understanding this can help in developing better treatments for anxiety disorders.
Journal reference:
- Dan Holley, Erica A. Varga et al., Temporal Dynamics of Uncertainty Cause Anxiety and Avoidance. Computational Psychiatry. DOI: 10.5334/cpsy.105.