Anticipation can be more terrifying than the actual event. This idea, famously captured by filmmaker and “master of suspense” Alfred Hitchcock, has now been scientifically explored by researchers at the University of California, Davis. Their recent study, published in the journal Computational Psychiatry, reveals that the hazard rate—the increasing likelihood that a negative event will occur as time passes—intensifies anxiety more than the actual probability of the event itself. The motivation behind this study stemmed from a fundamental need to understand the mechanics of anxiety, a condition…