The headline is broadly defensible, but the qualifications matter. Effect sizes vary by population, the strongest claims rest on shorter trials, and credible voices push back on how it's typically framed.
In other words, we feel calmer or we feel less alert, less stressed when moving our eyes from side to side. I just heard a story about this is that these are the sorts of eye movements that we do when we are ambulating, moving through space, through some sort of self-generated motion. And one can make up a pretty reasonable story in the evolutionary context or ecological context that forward movement and fear are generally incompatible with one another.
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Bookmarking — the dossier-vs-overview split is the right call. Most of the time I want overview; sometimes I want receipts.
Would love a "what would change this verdict" RSS feed. Sign me up if it exists.
And what was observed in these experiments in all of them actually, all five of those papers was a dramatic reduction in the activation and actually an inhibition a suppression of the fear or threat reflect circuitry which was a jaw dropper for me.
a lateralized eye movements of the sort that I'm describing and I'm moving my hand like this but I'll just do it with my eyes even though it's a little embarrassing to do that. Cause I know it looks strange, I don't mind cause I'm doing EMDR and EMDR reduces activation of the amygdala and related circuitries which reduces anxiety and reduces the amplitude of the threat reflex. Reduces sympathetic autonomic arousal.