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August 16, 2026Legal and Criminological PsychologyOpen Access

Fear dispositions in situational fear of crime: A virtual reality study

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Authors

JBJelle BrandsJDJanne van DoornJJJochem Jansen

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Overview

Virtual reality experiment reveals personal fear of crime mediates dispositional and situational fear in students, indicating personality shapes real-time threat perception.

Key Points

  • To evaluate the triadic relationship among dispositional fear, personal fear of crime, and situational fear, determining how stable personality traits shape momentary state fear responses.
  • Immersed a student sample in a standardized virtual reality urban neighborhood to control for physical and social environmental cues.
  • Assessed dispositional fear, personal fear of crime, and situational fear across four crime categories: theft, verbal aggression, physical aggression, and sexually transgressive behaviour.
  • Personal fear of crime fully mediated the relationship between dispositional fear and situational fear of crime across all four crime types.
  • Higher dispositional fear increased personal threat appraisal of crime, which subsequently elevated real-time situational fear reactions in the virtual environment.

Cite This Study

Brands et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a817a60f2fb91fc834ae272https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.70049
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Also Consider

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  1. 1Dispositional and Behavioural Dimensions of Fear of crime: A Structural Equation Model2026
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  3. 3Fear of crime and gender:2026
  4. 4Better safe than sorry? Exploratory associations between fear-learning processes and later paranoia in threat-exposed adolescents in standardized Virtual Reality environments2026
  5. 5Authentic Fear Responses in Virtual Reality: A Mobile EEG Study on Affective, Behavioral and Electrophysiological Correlates of Fear2021 · 33 citations