Everybody’s favorite clown, Dougie, ventures out a little too far in the lake.

“Didn’t you hear the old, Native American woman say something evil lurks in that there lake?” one of the great-looking people on the shore screams. Dougie ignores them, apparently unaware of the golden rule of modern cinema: Always listen to Native Americans, especially if they’re old and speak in hallowed tones. “You’ve gone too far, Dougie!” the great-looking people on the shore continue to shriek. “Come back!”

“C’mon, you chickens!” Dougie says, backstroking leisurely. “It’s fun, and there’s nothing out here!”

The music that cues Dougie’s impending doom spills out of our Dolby surround sound. A subtle roar follows, and those of us in the audience tense up. We grip the theater armrests so tight that our forearms flex. We join the gorgeous people on the shore, mentally screaming to Dougie to try to get him out of the water. We then join the collective hysteria that erupts when the water of the lake begins to swirl.

“Dougie, please!” we shout with the great-looking people.

“Aw, shut it!” Dougie says, waving off the warnings. 

The trouble is the actor who plays Dougie is unattractive and chubby, and those of us who have watched thousands of movies know our horror movies, and we know casting. We know unattractive and chubby types are doomed soon after they accept their role in a horror movie. 

The monster roars to an impossible height. Dougie looks up at it, and as his fate becomes apparent, he screams. Is the monster truly evil, or is it just hungry? We don’t know, and we don’t care. It’s going to eat Dougie, the comedic foil in our movie. The monster takes its time, so we can see the full breadth of its horror. It gnashes its teeth a little. It swivels its head about. It looks menacingly at Dougie. Dougie continues to look up, and his screaming continues until the monster lowers onto him and bites Dougie’s head off. The idea that this macabre scene took a full thirty seconds leaves those of us who have watched too many horror movies nonplussed.

“Why didn’t he just move?” we movie screamers have screamed for decades. “Why did he stay in the water, screaming, for thirty seconds? Why didn’t he just swim away?” It might have been pointless, as the monster was aquatic and Dougie is not, but we horror movie aficionados want to see some evidence of the survival instinct from our favorite victims. 

When we learn that actors have to stay on their mark, so directors can get the shot, we are a little less disgusted with the actors who played Dougie roles. We still want them to move, but we know they must obey the director who commands them to stay in a designated spots for the decapitation scene.

This cliché scene may strike horror in some, but I would venture to say that either the terrified are under the age of thirty, or they haven’t watched enough horror movies to know the tropes. For those of us who have crossed both thresholds, we know it’s just plain irrational that a person wouldn’t move or do something to get away from a menacing monster. We certainly wouldn’t just stand in one spot, looking up, screaming, at the person, place, or thing looking to seal our fate.

‘Are you sure?’ author David McRaney asks in his book You Are Not so Smart. “Of course,” we say. “Look at that thing. Look at its teeth. I don’t want to get my head bit off.” ‘How many times have you been confronted with an aquatic sea monster? We all know Dougie is an absolute moron for just standing there, but not only are Dougie’s reactions normal, they are a lot closer to a truth than anything you monster movie screamers might expect.’ In McRaney’s incredible book, You Are Not so Smart, he suggests that the one detail of this monster scene that might counter how we would actually react in a similar moment of unprecedented horror is Dougie’s screaming.^[1]  

Those of us who aren’t students of psychology know what we know. We know there are two basic reactions to catastrophic, chaotic moments: action and non-action, or as we call it acting and choking. Those who act can also be broken down into two subsets: The selfish who fight to save their own lives and the heroes who act to save others. Either way, casual, non-psychology types know there are only two reactions to such situations. Either the individual involved in the situation does something to save their lives, and the lives of those around them, or they choke.

McRaney argues that there is a third reaction, though casual, non-psychology types are more apt to view this course of action as little more than an extension of choking. Psychologists call it fear bradycardia. The difference between fear bradycardia and choking is that a choker will experience an acceleration of their heart rate, and a victim of fear bradycardia experiences a heart deceleration in a traumatic situation. An acceleration of the heart could lead a potential victim to fumble about and select an unfortunate reaction, or choke, but a deceleration might lead the potential victim to freeze up in a manner psychologists call attentive immobility. Fear bradycardia is a reflex, an involuntary, automatic instinct that often occurs in moments of unprecedented chaos and horror, heaped upon the unprepared.

Put succinctly, fear bradycardia is the idea that in our movie not only will Dougie not scream or scramble out of the way, he will reflexively stop moving and simply stay put, hoping beyond reason, for the best possible outcome. If we were watching ourselves in a movie, we would expect that we would unbuckle and exit a plane soon after it crashes. That is the way we imagine that we would react to a plane crash, and we all know that that is what we would do if we were lucky enough to land that role in the movie. We suspect that we might need a moment to deal with the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to us, but after that moment was over, we’d come to our senses and unbuckle and exit. 

“I know that when a plane crashes, it often leaks jet fuel that often leads to an explosion,” we’d say. “So, yeah, I’d unbuckle and exit.” We naturally assume that that would be our reaction to surviving a plane crash in real life, but we tend to forget how scary the plane crashing into the ground might be. If a movie monster scares us, we might need a little time to recover, if our child survived a minor tragedy, we had to take a moment–hand on heart–to digest what just happened before we kiss them and hug them and scold them for coming so close to a precarious situation. We need a moment to come down from those emotional extremes, and we might need another moment to internally deal with the euphoria that nothing actually happened. We’re talking minor instances here that could’ve been worse, but even if the worst case scenario happened, they would still be minor compared to surviving a plane crash. How much time would we need to deal a horrific tragedy that we were very lucky to suvive? We suspect that we might need a moment, but we would eventually come to grips with it and exit the plane.  

The concept psychologists are describing, when they talk about the term fear bradycardia, suggests that we will remain frozen beyond what we consider the norm. McRaney, and other psychologists suggest that even if that plane is on fire, and first responders and other survivors are screaming in our faces that the plane could blow, we might need a moment, or some space, to deal with everything that just happened and is now happening, before we act. We might even remain frozen hoping that this moment somehow passes. This fear bradycardia reaction involves an automatic, involuntary instinct that exists in all of us. Some refer to this state as tonic immobility, but no matter the name, it falls under the umbrella of another psychological term, normalcy bias.

McRaney details several incidents in which people experienced fear bradycardia: an F5 tornado in Bridge Creek, Oklahoma, survivors of floods, and even the infamous 9/11 Trade Center terrorist incident.

According to some first responders, the one commonality in most unprecedented tragedies is that most victims wander about in a dreamlike state. These first responders say that their first responsibility is to shake survivors out of this state, so the survivors can hopefully achieve full consciousness and save themselves. For even if their world is falling down around them, most survivors shut down and go to a safe, more normal space in their minds, if no one is around to shake them out of it.

In the aftermath of the 9/11/01 terrorist action, most first responders spoke of the calm that evacuating survivors exhibited. They stated that most of the survivors obediently followed instructions, without any panic, allowing for a safe exit that ultimately saved many lives. The first responders we saw interviewed on news networks stated that this evacuation, led by heroic first responders, provided a model for proper evacuation procedures.

Other first responders agreed with that sentiment, but they later added that it was almost too calm and orderly. They said it was so calm and so orderly, it was almost eerie. Very few survivors were screaming, the responders added, and though there wasn’t room to sprint, there is no record of anyone pushing, shoving, or doing anything out of the ordinary to get out of the burning, soon to be falling buildings. There is no record of survivors complaining about the slow, orderly exit, or attempting to find an alternative exit, if there was one available. When we first heard about this orderly exit, we considered it laudable that they avoided their impulses to get out of the buildings as fast as they could by whatever means necessary, because their actions ended up ensuring a greater number of survivors. Yet, we’re talking about approximately 14,000 to 18,000 of employees and customers who managed to escape before the World Trade Center towers collapsed. That level of decency could be characterized as uncommon.   

McRaney cited some of the accounts first responders of 9/11/01 reported of some survivors taking a couple extra, crucial moments to complete the log-out procedures on their computers. With first responders screaming out instructions, some survivors decided to gather their coats. Other first responders made note of the mundane conversations some survivors shared with their coworkers on the way out of the office. Why would a survivor of one of the nation’s worst tragedies talk about adding marshmallows to a flan cake recipe, or the reason their favorite player missed a dunk last night, on their way out of a burning building? To try to establish some level of normalcy amidst the chaos happening falling down around them.  

Those of us on the outside looking in might view this as absolute lunacy. If I were in that situation, we might think, I’d be running, screaming, and I might be crying. I might even knock an old lady down in my departure, but I would do everything I could to get out. I don’t care what this author says I’m all about survival brutha.

How many of those 14,000 to 18,000 survivors would be screaming at a Dougie to get out of the water? If Dougie were in the exact same scenario as they were, during the terrorist tragedy of 9/11/2001, and he logged out of his computer properly, gathered his coat, or shared his flan cake recipe, how many of them would’ve shouted at him to get out of the collapsing buildings? We’ve all placed ourselves in the shoes of dystopian movie characters, and we know we would do things differently. We’ve all shouted condemnations at our various screens when the Dougies just sit there as a monster nears them, and we all know how we would’ve reacted before the menacing monster bites our head off. If these survivors were shown security cam footage of themselves evacuating in such a nonchalant manner, would they scream “GET OUT!” at themselves while watching themselves in the footage? They would be more shocked than we are at their nonchalance. “I honestly can’t remember what I was thinking,” is something they’d likely say.

“If you haven’t experienced a true tragedy,” McRaney writes, “You can never know how prepared you will be, and you can never know how you’ll react. The ideas we have about how we will react may be lies we’ve told ourselves so often that we might end up not knowing the actual truth until it’s too late to rectify it.”

Shutting down computers, gathering coats, and having mundane conversations are automatic, involuntary responses that occur because of this dream-like, faux normal state we defer to when it becomes clear that no amount of rationalizing will ever render the horrific, unprecedented, chaotic moment normal. We shut down to block out the flood of external stimuli that might cause us further panic if we didn’t.

“The people in the World Trade Centers on 9/11 had a supreme need to feel safe and secure,” McRaney writes. “They had a desire to make everything around them go normal again in the face of something so horrific that their brains couldn’t deal with it in a functional manner.”

As stated previously, most casual, non-psychology types might characterize this as choking in the clutch, but McRaney states that it goes beyond that, because they do not freeze as a response to panic. “It’s a reflexive incredulity,” McRaney writes, –attributing the term to Amanda Ripley– “that causes you to freeze up in a reflexive manner. This reflexive incredulity causes you to wait for normalcy to return beyond the point where it’s reasonable to do so. It’s a tendency that those concerned with evacuation procedures –the travel industry, architects, first responders, and stadium personnel– are well aware of, and they document this in manuals and trade publications.”

Sociologists McRaney cites say, “You are more prone to dawdle if you fail to follow these steps and are not informed of the severity of the issue.” Failing to gain the necessary information leads to speculation and to the inevitable comparisons and contrasts of other more familiar incidents.

Men, in particular, seem to have an almost imbedded desire to rationalize fear away. Fear, by its very nature is irrational, and most men feel it incumbent upon them to keep fear a rationalization away. In the face of a tragedy that alarms most, the rational, no fear, man is prone to say, “This is bad, sure, but it’s not as bad as a previous experience I once had?”

Their preferred culprit for unwarranted fear is the media and politicians. “Fear equals ratings,” we say to tap into cynical truths, “and they want to keep us in a constant state of fear, so we’ll vote for them.” There is an element of truth to that, of course, but it’s also true that the terrorist incident on 9/11/01 was one of the most horrific to ever happen in our country.

“That is true, but there was just so much fear they spread that I smelled politics in it,” some cable news viewers said regarding the coverage of 9/11/01, “and we should all start viewing the hype of politicians and media players as nothing more than that, hype.” Most of us recognize that some media outlets and politicians make their bones on promoting fear, but at times, a bit of fear –an emotion that can ignite awareness– might save our life.

For these reasons and others, it is crucial for a city facing an ensuing crisis to allow the local media to inundate us with reports of that impending storm, because the media needs to help us redefine our norm. It is also a reason for those of us who make fun of our friends for paying attention to the flight attendant’s pre-flight instructions, to drop our macho façades and listen. We may also want to drop the pretense that as frequent flyers we are prepared for anything. We must redefine our sense of normalcy in preparation for the many things that could go wrong in the air or upon our return to ground.

“So, you eggheads are telling me that I’m a Dougie?” we might ask students of psychology.

“We’re saying we don’t know how you would react,” the eggheads would reply, “and either do you.”

We can all see some element of ourselves in McRaney’s findings, but we find it impossible to believe that we’d be a Dougie. If we strive forobjectivity, we might cede that we wouldn’t be as heroic as we imagine, but it’s impossible for us to picture that Dougie’s near-catatonic reactions are closer to the truth than we are about our reaction. We live with idea that a fight or flight survivor’s instinct will kick in if we are facing impending doom. We think of ourselves the badger in our scenario that suggests those dumb enough to corner us will get what they get, and it doesn’t matter if we’re as chubby or as unattractive as Dougie was, we know we’ll do whatever it takes to survive. The difference is the badger knows how he’ll react, because the badger has been cornered so many times before, and he’s honed the fight or flight skills. We’ve all experienced some moments that could be characterized as traumatic, and most of us have a decent batting average when it comes to reacting to them. Will that be enough to avoid experiencing fear bradycardia, tonic immobility, reflexive incredulity, or any of the normal bias tendencies we have in the wake of a horrific incident of unprededented levels? We don’t know, McRaney writes, and we won’t know until the decisive moment reveals if we are so ill prepared that we fall prey to automatic and involuntary instincts that result from lying to ourselves for so long that we end up rationalizing ourselves to death.

[1]McRaney, David. November, 2011. You Are Not So Smart. New York, New York. Penguin Group (USA) Inc.