{
  "abstract": "Fear shapes how populations respond to earthquakes, yet it is almost always measured retrospectively, once it cannot be separated from the damage. On 23 April 2025 a MW 6.2 earthquake shook Istanbul – a megacity that has anticipated a major rupture for 25 years – at ground motions below design level, causing one death and light damage. Using a validated earthquake-fear instrument delivered in real time on a crowdsourced platform, we obtained 186 responses within hours, each linked to the respondent’s reported intensity and location. Within the sample, fear barely tracks shaking: its correlation with reported intensity is weak (r = 0.24; 6% of variance), and respondents on Istanbul’s European and Asian sides report indistinguishable fear (24.2 versus 24.5; p = 0.85) despite the European side shaking harder. Fear responds to being substantially shaken at all – a threshold – not to how hard the ground shook – a dose. The footprint was a chronic condition made vivid, not an acute reaction: it produced a behavioural response – 100,000 people outdoors, injuries dominated by panic – out of proportion to a one-fatality event. Real-time psychometric measurement through crowdsourcing is feasible at scale and uniquely separates fear from its physical cause.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Yasemin Didem Aktas"
    },
    {
      "name": "Remy Bossu"
    },
    {
      "name": "Simon Issartel"
    },
    {
      "name": "Robert Steed"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/fbj73ezq5zr9g.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.31223/x5kn6h",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "fbj73ezq5zr9g",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/15622/",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "bepress",
      "Engineering"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Fear of Earthquake Scale"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Istanbul"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Social and Behavioral Sciences"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "behavioural response"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "crowdsourced seismology"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "earthquake fear"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "moderate earthquake"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "real-time psychometrics"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "risk perception"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3203|Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7223129999",
  "pdf_url": "https://eartharxiv.org/repository/object/15622/download/27069/",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-21",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/fbj73ezq5zr9g.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:49Z",
      "native_id": "15622",
      "source": "eartharxiv",
      "url": "https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/15622/"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "medicine",
      "origin": "openalex:3203|Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research",
      "subfield": "psychiatry"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Fear without a dose-response: real-time crowdsourced psychometrics show a moderate earthquake’s psychological footprint is decoupled from shaking intensity in an anticipation-primed megacity",
  "title_text": "Fear without a dose-response: real-time crowdsourced psychometrics show a moderate earthquake’s psychological footprint is decoupled from shaking intensity in an anticipation-primed megacity",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:49Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/fbj73ezq5zr9g",
  "venue": "EarthArXiv",
  "versions": []
}