Giving context emotional significance by administration of aversive pictures

Repeated presentation of a picture of an autopsy during a particular auditory context during two experimental sessions resulted in habituation of the unconditioned skin conductance response to the picture and in acquisition of conditioned emotional properties by the auditory context. An emotionally neutral picture, presented in a different auditory context provided a control condition for comparison with the aversive condition. The onset of the aversive auditory context evoked significantly larger skin conductance responses in Session 2 than were evoked by the neutral context. Furthermore, significantly more frequent unelicited skin conductance responses occurred during the aversive context than during the neutral one. These differences between the contexts were observed equally in subjects high in trait anxiety as in subjects low in trait anxiety. The high and low anxiety groups different in frequency of unelicited skin conductance responses, regardless of context. It was concluded that context can acquire conditioned tonic emotional properties as a result of the occurrence of phasic aversive events, even while the reactions to the phasic events are themselves habituating. This phenomenon does not interact with the subject's trait anxiety level.