Courage Isn’t Courage Without Fear

Although Gibbons et al. (2025) found that fear and sleep deprivation combined to predict unique variance in 5 out of 6 everyday and heroic courage measures, those measures either measured willingness to engage in courageous behaviors or fear when engaging in these behaviors, as suggested by the revised 20-item Woodard Pury Courage Scale (R-WPCS-20). However, most courage definitions involve risky behaviors considered courageous that elicit fear, which means that fear, when willing to engage in risky/courageous behaviors, indicates courage. Conversely, fear when unwilling to engage in risky/courageous behaviors indicates cowardice. The current study used the data from 256 participants in the Gibbons et al. study using the R-WPCS-20 to combine the ratings for willingness to engage in 20 risky behaviors and fear to engage in each of those behaviors into 20 courage ratings. Specifically, 3 was subtracted from each of the willingness ratings, ranging from 1 (low) to 5 (high), and multiplied by the fear rating, ranging from 1 (no fear) to 5 (high fear), resulting in 20 combined courage measures ranging from -10 (high cowardness) to 10 (high courage). The 20 combined ratings loaded well onto a single factor of courage with high factor loadings (the lowest factor loading was .764) and a Cronbach’s alpha of .99, demonstrating excellent interitem reliability. The results showed that fear/anxiety interacted with 2 measures of sleep (hours and poor sleep quality) to predict the single measure of courage that combined willingness to engage in courageous behaviors and fear when engaging in them, which clearly emphasized the contribution of fear in defining and predicting courage.