Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Searching for threat.

Jason Tipples1, Andrew W Young, Philip Quinlan

  • 1University of York, UK. J.Tipples@hull.ac.uk

The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A, Human Experimental Psychology
|August 22, 2002
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Reflections on and recommendations from the OCEANIC study CYP and parent advisory group: a Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement case study.

Research involvement and engagement·2026
Same author

One year quality of life outcomes in critically ill children: a multicenter prospective cohort study.

Critical care (London, England)·2026
Same author

Care and support needs of families in the first 9 months after PICU discharge: A multi-center, longitudinal, qualitative study.

Intensive & critical care nursing·2026
Same author

Do Socio-Economic Determinants Influence DPYD Testing? A Real-World Study of 1478 Cancer Patients Receiving Fluoropyrimidine Chemotherapy.

Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland)·2026
Same author

The Fabrication of Requisite, Durable, Printed Upper Extremity Orthoses Through Innovative Means in an Austere Environment.

Military medicine·2025
Same author

Bond Strength of a Self-Adhesive Universal Resin Cement to Enamel and Dentin with or without an Adhesive Bonding Agent.

Journal of clinical and experimental dentistry·2025

This study investigated if threatening stimuli are quickly recognized using visual search tasks. Results indicate no consistent threat detection advantage, suggesting visual search doesn't easily reveal biases for threatening stimuli.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Visual Perception
  • Attention Studies

Background:

  • Biologically relevant threatening stimuli are hypothesized to be rapidly recognized or capture visuo-spatial attention.
  • Previous research suggests potential biases in visual processing for threat-related information.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether threatening stimuli are detected faster or capture attention more readily in a visual search task.
  • To determine if any observed effects are due to threat per se or other stimulus properties like pleasantness.

Main Methods:

  • A visual search task was employed across multiple experiments.
  • Stimuli included threatening animals, pleasant animals, plants, and fruit.
  • Reaction times for detection and search rates were measured under various conditions, including proximity to fixation.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Experiment 1 showed faster detection and search for threatening animals versus plants.
  • Experiment 2 revealed similar advantages for pleasant animals, indicating the effect was not threat-specific.
  • Subsequent experiments (3 and 4) and a final experiment found no consistent threat detection advantage, regardless of stimulus arrangement or category pre-specification.

Conclusions:

  • The visual search paradigm does not provide robust evidence for a general population bias towards rapidly detecting threatening stimuli.
  • The initial findings of a threat advantage appear to be confounded by stimulus pleasantness or other non-threat factors.
  • Further research may be needed to explore nuanced conditions under which threat detection biases might emerge.