N. HEYWOOD ET AL.
of the unknown or future life events and many others. The par-
ticipants were given honorariums to cover their expenses. The
possibility that participant expectancy effects influenced re-
ported fear reduction is a valid concern. Even though the ex-
perimental design wasn’t known to the participants they should
have been able to figure it out after the first experiment and that
possibility cannot be guarded against in such a simple experi-
ment.
Measures
Fear Survey Schedule Π (FSS Π) was developed by James H.
Geer to measure the responses to commonly occurring fears.
The instrument lists potential fear evoking situations and stim-
uli. A client rates his or her level of discomfort or distress. Each
item is rated on a 7 point scale of intensity of fear. Higher
scores indicate greater fear. The FSS Π is considered a very
reliable instrument with an internal consistency coefficient
of .94 using Kuder Richardson formula 20.
Procedures
The participants signed informed consent forms to show their
approval to join the experiment. Selection of participants was
done thru purposive sampling wherein all the participants have
fears as shown in the results by the Fear Survey. The ten par-
ticipants took complete physical and laboratory examinations to
determine their fitness to participate in the study. The tests were
administered by the researchers who are practicing psycholo-
gists while the physical examination was conducted by a medi-
cal doctor.
The intense aerobics exercise was instructed by different
aerobic experts in their respective fields and took place in the
35th floor of an air-conditioned gym. The respondents under-
went intense aerobic exercise sessions utilizing all equipments
inside the gym up to the point of their exhaustion (1 - 3/2 hr).
The 3 sessions lasted for two to three hours with an interval of
one day rest period after each session. They were pre-tested
before the exercise intervention was done to verify their current
fear levels and were post-tested after they signaled they were
exhausted, to determine the possible change of their fear level
respectively, using the Fear Questionnaire.
Statistical Analysis
The Mean and Standard Deviation values were used to pre-
sent the current anxiety level of the respondents as measured by
the FSS Π instrument. Also, One Way Repeated Measures
ANOVA was used to test for differences in the effect of ex-
perimental interventions on the same group of subjects by ex-
amining the changes in each individual. Examining the differ-
ences between the values rather than the absolute values re-
moves any differences due to individual responses, producing a
more sensitive and more powerful test.
Results
Table 1 presents the Mean and Standard Deviation results
from the initial pre-test up to the final post-test. Reflected from
the findings, the initial pre-test achieved a 162.60 (34.89) mean
rating which classifies the respondents as having very high
levels of fears. With the application of the exercise program,
results seen from post-test 1 mean of 143.30 (41.47), post-test 2
Table 1.
Mean and standard deviation findings.
Mean Standard Deviation Interpretation
Pre-test 162.60 34.89 very high
Post-test 1 143.30 41.47 high
Post-test 2 122.10 50.14 average
Post-test 3 109.10 50.71 average
mean of 122.10 (50.14) and post-test 3 mean of 109.10 (50.71),
there is a substantial decrease on the fear levels seen in the
respondents n from High to Average.
Discussion
This experiment was meant only to be a pilot study to alert
the psychological community of the reality of fearlessness pro-
duced by physical exhaustion. Its small budget dictated that
only ten experimental subjects be used without a control group.
It’s obvious that such a small number doesn’t constitute scien-
tific proof and no valid conclusions can be drawn from it how-
ever other experiments, unknown to us at the time, demonstrate
that these experimental results are correct. The other experi-
ments demonstrate that physical exhaustion produces endor-
phins which cause body feelings of sedation, analgesia and
euphoria which are incompatible with fear. So it turned out that
not using a control group didn’t hurt the results of this experi-
ment, the results were exactly what they should have been.
Physical exhaustion, the state where a person can no longer
effectively continue doing exercises, was used as the end of the
intervention because other markers or procedures weren’t
known to us at the time. However there are other strategies that
can be used. Ströhie et al. (2005) demonstrated in an experi-
ment that aerobic exercise is effective in treating panic and
panic attacks. They used aerobic exercise for 30 minutes at
70% of maximum oxygen consumption however they made no
claims that endorphins were involved.
This experiment was performed in the third week of March,
2010, in the Fitness First health center on the 35th floor of the
Wynsum building in Manila and wasn’t published until 2012,
however in the intervening time we discovered the experiments
on runner’s high which greatly strengthens these findings.
Those studies have demonstrated that long distance running,
which we equate to physical exhaustion, releases endorphins
inducing analgesia and sedation in the body and a euphoric-like
feeling happens. Thus it appears that endorphins released into
the body by strenuous exercise cause a decrease in a person’s
fear and anxiety level which explains the success of this ex-
periment.
It’s obvious that slight or mild diseases and conditions re-
spond best to treatment whereas severe conditions respond less
favorably so. This holds true in the treatment of fear and anxi-
ety also, which is the subject of this report. Numerous studies
of cognitive behavioral therapy conclude that there is a small
percentage, 10% to 15%, of treated clients who get no relief
from their fears at all. Thus the people who have the least fear
get the best results from therapy and those who have the most
fear get none at all. The other anxious people lie somewhere
between those two conditions. Might it be possible that by us-
ing physical exhaustion to lessen a client’s fear, before expo-
sure therapy begins, that he may temporarily transcend out from
the untreatable group into the less fearful more successfully
Copyright © 2012 SciRes.
614