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Related Experiment Videos

Automatic attention does not equal automatic fear: preferential attention without implicit valence.

Helena M Purkis1, Ottmar V Lipp

  • 1School of Psychology, University of Queensland, QLD, Australia. h.purkis@psy.uq.edu.au

Emotion (Washington, D.C.)
|May 23, 2007
PubMed
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Humans may have an innate predisposition for fearing snakes and spiders, but negative evaluations aren't automatic. While all participants attended to these animals, only controls showed negative implicit evaluations.

Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Comparative Psychology

Background:

  • Nonassociative fear acquisition theories propose an innate human predisposition for certain fears, like snakes and spiders.
  • An evolved fear module may mediate this, responding to threat stimuli features with preferential attention and automatic fear.
  • This study investigates attentional processing and implicit evaluation of snake and spider stimuli.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To examine attentional processing and implicit evaluation of snake and spider images.
  • To compare these processes in individuals with different explicit attitudes towards snakes and spiders (controls vs. experts).
  • To test whether negative evaluations are automatically elicited during preferential attention to threat-relevant stimuli.

Main Methods:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Utilized visual search and affective priming tasks.
  • Assessed attentional processing and implicit evaluation of snake and spider pictures.
  • Compared results between control participants (n=25) and snake/spider experts (n=23).

Main Results:

  • Attentional processing and explicit evaluation diverged.
  • All participants showed preferential attention to snakes and spiders.
  • Negative evaluations were observed only in controls, not experts.
  • Implicit evaluations of dangerous vs. non-dangerous snakes/spiders differed for experts, but not controls.

Conclusions:

  • Snakes and spiders capture preferential attention across different expertise levels.
  • Negative evaluations are not automatically elicited during the preferential attention to these stimuli.
  • Explicit attitudes and expertise influence implicit evaluations of threat-relevant stimuli.