LETTER FROM STOCKHOLM
"Face your worst nightmares. All alone. One night somewhere in Sweden." Sweden's Liseberg amusement park in Gothenburg issued the challenge on September 13. To underscore the seriousness of this proposition, a short video clip was posted online, featuring images inspired by horror movie classics, such as bloodied hands, demonic laughter and a blade slicing through a piece of meat.
By the September 25 deadline, 1,500 volunteers of all ages and from all over the world had applied. To take part, volunteers had to be over 18, love thrills and be available to travel to Sweden on October 11, when the Peak Fear Experiment will be held in collaboration with the Recreational Fear Lab, a research institute on recreational fear at the University of Aarhus, Denmark.
Details of the event have been kept secret, and for good reason: "Not knowing what will happen is also part of the experience," said Marten Westlund, communications director at Liseberg. In tests carried out on people waiting in line for a haunted house in Denmark, Danish researchers noticed that visitors' hearts were already racing. "People seem to systematically overestimate how scary an experience is going to be. And when they find out that it wasn't that bad, they get some relief and pleasure out of it," said Mathias Clasen, co-director of the laboratory.
However, Westlund revealed that "fewer than five volunteers" would be subjected to their worst fears for one night. Among these fears, four regularly crop up: the fear of not knowing what's going to happen, the fear of heights, the fear of being alone and the fear of clowns. The volunteers will be equipped with various measuring devices, enabling scientists to gather data.
To maintain safety, each candidate chooses a safeword that they can say if they want to stop the experiment, and a doctor oversees the experiment. The goal is to find out the optimal point between pleasure and terror. In a study published in November 2020 in the journal Psychological Science, the Aarhus researchers, who have dubbed it the fear "sweet spot," demonstrated that "enjoyment has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with fear," explained Clasen. To be entertaining, the fright must not be too intense, at the risk of becoming unpleasant.
This is just one of many studies the Danish scientists have carried out since their first collaboration with an amusement park in 2016. Three years ago, it led to the creation of the laboratory.
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