Emotional Reaction to Fear- and Disgust-Evoking Snakes: Sensitivity and Propensity in Snake-Fearful Respondents

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Silvie Rádlová¹  Jakub Polák¹  Markéta Janovcová¹  Kristýna Sedláčková¹  Šárka Peléšková¹  Eva Landová¹  Daniel Frynta¹ 

[1] Applied Neuroscience and Neuroimaging Research Programme, National Institute of Mental Health;Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University;Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University

关键词: disgust;    emotional response;    DS-R;    fear;    image rating;    self-reported emotion;    snake phobia;    SNAQ;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00031

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

This paper continues our previous study in which we examined the respondents’ reaction to two morphologically different snake stimuli categories – one evoking exclusively fear and another evoking exclusively disgust. Here we acquired Likert-type scale scores of fear and disgust evoked by the same snake stimuli by a total of 330 respondents. Moreover, we collected data about the respondents’ age, gender, education, snake fear [Snake Questionnaire (SNAQ)], and disgust propensity [Disgust Scale-Revised (DS-R)], and we analyzed the effect of these variables on the emotional scores (with special focus on snake-fearful respondents). In addition, we collected the SNAQ and DS-R scores from the respondents tested in the previous study using the rank-ordering method to directly compare the results of these two approaches. The results showed that non-fearful respondents give high scores of fear to the fear-eliciting snakes and high scores of disgust to the disgust-eliciting snakes, but they give low scores of the other emotional dimension (disgust/fear) to each. In contrast, snake-fearful respondents not only give higher fear and disgust scores to the respective snake stimuli, but they also give high scores of fear to the disgust-eliciting snakes and high scores of disgust to the fear-eliciting snakes. Both Likert-scale scores and rank-ordering data show that the clear border dividing both snake stimuli categories dissolves when evaluated by the snake-fearful respondents.

【 授权许可】

CC BY