Current Study
A significant amount of fear of darkness may exist in college students. This fear may be a classical fear seen in conditioned children that has not been outgrown or it could have evolved into more of a realistic fear of the dark that plays to people’s fear of being victimized in the dark. For the cur-rent study we predicted that a significant fear of darkness would be found at a college campus. We also predicted that, following the information given by Nasar and Jones (1997), fear levels would be heightened when individuals were presented with scenarios where someone could be conceal-ing themselves by using the dark. Specifically, we predicted that nighttime photos would be rated as less comfortable than daytime photos. A within subjects design was used because all participants rated both the day and nighttime photos