What do you work on?

I study how people learn to avoid fear and pain.

What did you do using Gorilla and what did you find?

I have run mul­ti­ple exper­i­ments in Gorilla. The common thread is that I study how indi­vid­u­als learn to avoid fear and pain related stimuli.

My recent experiment con­sist­ed of a com­put­er task and the filling out of many ques­tion­naires. During the task par­tic­i­pants have to learn to asso­ciate a neutral picture (i.e., picture of a red lamp) with the pre­sen­ta­tion of a loud scream, and another neutral picture (i.e., picture of a green lamp) with the absence of the loud scream. After­wards, par­tic­i­pants were informed that they could avoid the pre­sen­ta­tion of the scream by means of a button-press. During the ques­tion­naire part of the experiment, we tested several indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences using well-val­i­dat­ed ques­tion­naires. This includes trait anxiety and intol­er­ance of uncer­tain­ty measures.

Did you include any special fea­tures in your study to ensure good quality data?

We had to include some atten­tion checks at the end of the task to ensure that par­tic­i­pants learned the main con­tin­gen­cies of the experiment.

For you, what is the stand-out feature in Gorilla?

It is par­tic­u­lar­ly easy to build a basic task, meaning that no prior pro­gram­ming expe­ri­ence is needed. If you want to do some­thing com­pli­cat­ed you can use Javascript but there are plenty of support mate­ri­als for it.

What is the most excit­ing piece of work or research you’ve ever done?

I like the recent work we do in the explo­ration-exploita­tion dilemma in pain. We have recent­ly pub­lished a paper on it: Kry­po­tos, A.-M., Crombez, G., Alves, M., Claes, N. & Vlaeyen, J. (2022). The explo­ration-exploita­tion dilemma in pain: an exper­i­men­tal inves­ti­ga­tion. PAIN, 163, e215-e233.

What real-world problem do you see that your research could impact?

My over­ar­ch­ing goal is to learn to predict which indi­vid­u­als will develop anxiety symp­to­ma­tol­ogy or chronic pain.

How do you think online research is going to change your field?

Online research allows us to reach many indi­vid­u­als in a short time. Of course, there could be more room for noise, but given that you include many par­tic­i­pants and include some atten­tion checks, this noise will be reduced.

How did Gorilla make your life or research better, easier or faster?

When I had to move all my research online, due to COVID, Gorilla was a life saver as I did not have to spend so much time learn­ing it.

What science book have your read recent­ly that you’d rec­om­mend to others?

Sta­tis­ti­cal Rethink­ing by Richard McEl­reath. I read it more than 5 years ago but still this book is some­thing else.

What is the biggest advan­tage of online research methods?

That you can get enor­mous amounts of data, fast.

When you’re not working what do you enjoy doing?

I enjoy working to begin with. Apart from that, I enjoy trying new things, with most of them failing but still not a day should be boring!