Bob Novella

It was just essentially, you know, immeasurable.

Any change would be so small that you couldn't measure it.

But when they looked at people that weren't necessarily close, say the two people in the group that aren't like, you know, their best friends, say, when they examined those people, and yet again, of course, fear was a good indicator and, you know, physical contact, well, but the measured increase in closeness was statistically significant in that case, but it was still very small from 4.61 to 4.81 on that seven point Likert scale.

So the haunted house made people feel closer in the moment.

You know, the bonding vibes were definitely there right after, but the before and after closeness score barely budged when it was questioned in detail.

So in the final study, they were designed, it's more kind of qualitative.

They were designed, the study five was designed to explore why was there discrepancy?

You know, why did people feel closer, but they really weren't technically closer?

So they interviewed 20 participants,

And 16 of the 20 participants emphasized that talking about and processing the event afterwards is what really made them feel closer.

So I'll quote the paper here as well.

It said, 16 out of 20 participants emphasized that reflection and conversation after the haunted house experience, whether during the walk back to the car, on the ride home, or while standing in line for food,

They played a central role in creating feelings of closeness.

For many, it was not the shared fear alone, but the act of recounting, laughing, and teasing afterward that seemed to deepen the bonding experience.

So, unfortunately, they didn't do any, like, post...

assessment, like say three days after, I wonder what that would indicate.

So this demonstrated a couple things here, the potential of this post experience processing, and related to that the limits of immediate measurement, right?

Those are two things that come out of this.

So yeah, like I said, perhaps in the future, they can do this test again.

And it's like a few days later and see if it actually is moving that needle a bit.