Threat and Uncertainty — Lifelike Laboratory

Threatening environments are, by their very nature, unpredictable. Although we can speak about the fight or flight response, the hows, whys, and whens of fighting or fleeing vary dramatically across situations and over time. We are interested in how the mind, body, and brain handle these ever-changing demands. We have developed virtual worlds (The Underwood Project and Room 101) to simulate the dynamic nature of the threat response. We are also using real-world sampling techniques to explore threat responses in everyday life.

Relevant publications:

McCall C & Laycock A (2026) Moving targets: threat and uncertainty on the front line. Front. Psychol. 17:1888719. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1888719

Sullivan, E., McCall, C., Croissant, M., Henderson, L. M., Schofield, G., & Cairney, S. (2026). Tired and Wired: Sleep Deprivation Prevents Affective Renormalisation During Exposure to Ambiguous Threat. Sleep Medicine, 138, 107678.

Sullivan, E. C., McCall, C., Brose, A., Henderson, L. M., & Cairney, S. A. (2025). Emotional inertia is independently associated with cognitive emotion regulation strategies and sleep quality. Cognition and Emotion, 39(8), 1930-1937.

Sullivan, E. C., McCall, C., Henderson, L. M., & Cairney, S. A. (2025). Disentangling sleep’s role in emotion processing. Neuropsychologia, 109269.

Laycock, A., Schofield, G. & McCall, C. (2024). The effects of threat on complex decision-making: Evidence from a virtual environment. Scientific Reports: 22637.

Petrucci, A. S., McCall, C., Schofield, G., Wardell, V., Safi, O. K., & Palombo, D. J. (2024). The relationship between environmentally induced emotion and memory for a naturalistic virtual experience. Cognition and Emotion, 1-16.

Sullivan, E. C., James, E., Henderson, L. M., McCall, C., & Cairney, S. A. (2023). The influence of emotion regulation strategies and sleep quality on depression and anxiety. cortex, 166, 286-305.

McCall, C., Schofield, G., Halgarth, D., Blyth, G., Laycock, A., & Palombo, D. J. (2023). The underwood project: A virtual environment for eliciting ambiguous threat. Behavior research methods, 55(8), 4002-4017.

Mckeown, B., Poerio, G. L., Strawson, W. H., Martinon, L. M., Riby, L. M., Jefferies, E., McCall*, C. & Smallwood*, J. (2021). The impact of social isolation and changes in work patterns on ongoing thought during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(40) e2102565118. *joint senior

Hildebrandt, L. K., McCall, C., & Singer, T. (2019). Socioaffective versus sociocognitive mental trainings differentially affect emotion regulation strategies. Emotion, 19(8), 1329.

Over, H., & McCall, C. (2018). Becoming us and them: Social learning and intergroup bias. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 12(4), e12384.

Bertrand, P., Guegan, J., Robieux, L., McCall, C. , & Zenasni, F. (2018). Learning empathy through virtual reality: Multiple strategies for training empathy-related abilities using body ownership Illusions in embodied virtual reality. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 5, 26.

Wade, A., McCall, C., Karapanagiotidis, T., Schofield, G., Preston, C., Hartley, T., Kaestner, M., Horner, A., Maloney, R., Smallwood, J., Jefferies, E., Bloj, M. & Harris, J. (2018). A neuroscientific approach to exploring fundamental questions in VR. Electronic Imaging, 2018(3), 435-1.

Hildebrandt, L. K., McCall, C., & Singer, T. (2018). Socio-affective versus socio-cognitive mental trainings differentially affect emotion regulation strategies. Emotion.

Hildebrandt, L. K., McCall, C., Engen, H. G., & Singer, T. (2016). Cognitive flexibility, heart rate variability, and resilience predict fine‐grained regulation of arousal during prolonged threat. Psychophysiology, 53(6), 880–890.

McCall, C., Hildebrandt, L. K., Hartmann, R., Baczkowski, B. M., & Singer, T. (2016). Introducing the Wunderkammer as a tool for emotion research: Unconstrained gaze and movement patterns in three emotionally evocative virtual worlds. Computers in Human Behavior, 59, 93–107.

McCall, C., Hildebrandt, L., Bornemann, B., & Singer, T. (2015). Physiophenomenology in Retrospect: Memory Reliably Reflects Physiological Arousal During a Prior Threatening Experience. Consciousness and Cognition, 38, 60–70.

Kane, H., McCall, C., Collins, N., & Blascovich, J.B. (2012). Mere presence is not enough: Responsive support in a virtual world. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 37–44.

McCall, C., Tipper, C., Blascovich, J., & Grafton, S.T. (2011). Attitudes Trigger Motor Behavior Through Conditioned Associations: Neural and Behavioral Evidence. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7(7), 841–849.

McCall, C. & Blascovich, J. (2009) How, when, and why to use digital experimental virtual environments to study social behavior. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3: 744–758.

McCall, C., Blascovich, J., Young, A, Persky, S. (2009) Using immersive virtual environments to measure proxemic behavior and to predict aggression. Social Influence, 4, 138–154.