Is safety a state of mind? Exploring the impact of arousal on pedestrians’ safety appraisals and attentiveness

Being and feeling safe is fundamental to pedestrians. Previous research on safety appraisals investigated the effect of environmental attributes, such as prospect or concealment, but the role of the individual's internal states has received little empirical attention. Arousal and anxiety serve to promote survival, as they increase alertness and attention to threatful or ambiguous stimuli. Where previous studies have shown arousal to covary with appraisals and alertness, the present study aims to demonstrate the causal path from arousal to safety appraisal and attentiveness. We manipulated (N = 67) arousal dimensions (tense and energetic) through affective sounds to test their effect on a) appraisals of the safety of moderately safe nocturnal urban environments and b) cognitive alertness (using a reaction time task). As expected, increased tense arousal negatively affected safety appraisals, but no causal effects were found on the cognitive task. Limitations and implications of these findings are discussed. • Arousal was manipulated independently of the environment being appraised. • Changes in arousal lead to differences in environmental safety appraisals. • Changes in arousal had no effect on alertness.