The Detection of Fear-Relevant Stimuli: Are Guns Noticed as Quickly as Snakes?

Emotion

Volumn 7, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 691-696

  Fox, Elaine ^a   Griggs, Laura ^a   Mouchlianitis, Elias ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

appraisal; basic emotions; fear; threat detection; visual search

Indexed keywords

ADULT; ARTICLE; EMOTION; FEAR; FEMALE; FLOWER; HUMAN; HUMAN EXPERIMENT; MALE; MUSHROOM; RESPONSE TIME; SNAKE; TASK PERFORMANCE; THREAT; VISUAL STIMULATION; WEAPON;

ADOLESCENT; ADULT; ANIMALS; ATTENTION; FEAR; FEMALE; FIREARMS; HUMANS; MALE; MIDDLE AGED; REACTION TIME; SIGNAL DETECTION (PSYCHOLOGY); SNAKES; VISUAL PERCEPTION;

EID: 38149132365     PISSN: 15283542     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1037/1528-3542.7.4.691     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. Aggleton J.P. The amygdala: A functional analysis. 2nd ed. (2000), Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom
2. Armony J.L., and LeDoux J. How danger is encoded: Toward a systems, cellular, and computational understanding of cognitive-emotional interactions in fear. In: Gazzaniga M.S. (Ed). The new cognitive neurosciences. 2nd ed. (2000), MIT Press, Cambridge 1067-1079
3. Blanchette I. Snakes, spiders, guns, and syringes: How specific are evolutionary constraints on the detection of threatening stimuli?. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 59 (2006) 1484-1504
4. Brosch T., and Sharma D. The role of fear-relevant stimuli in visual search: A comparison of phylogenetic and ontogenetic stimuli. Emotion 5 (2005) 360-364
5. Calder A., Lawrence A., and Young A.W. Neuropsychology of fear and loathing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2 (2001) 352-363
6. Cook S., and Mineka S. Observational conditioning of fear to fear-relevant versus fear-irrelevant stimuli in rhesus monkeys. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 98 (1989) 448-459
7. De Silva P., Rachman S., and Seligman M. Prepared phobias and obsessions: Therapeutic outcome. Behavioral Research and Therapy 15 (1977) 65-77
8. Eastwood J.D., Smilek D., and Merikle P.M. Differential attentional guidance by unattended faces expressing positive and negative emotion. Perception and Psychophysics 63 (2001) 1004-1013
9. Ekman P. Expression and the nature of emotion. In: Scherer K.R., and Ekman P. (Eds). Approaches to emotion (1984), Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ 319-344
10. Feldman-Barrett L., and Wager T.D. The structure of emotion. Evidence from neuroimaging studies. Current Directions in Psychological Science 15 (2006) 79-83
11. Fox E., and Damjanovic L. The eyes are sufficient to produce a threat superiority effect. Emotion 6 (2006) 534-539
12. Fox E., Lester V., Russo R., Bowles R.J., Pichler A., and Dutton K. Facial expressions of emotion: Are angry faces detected more efficiently?. Cognition and Emotion 14 (2000) 61-92
13. Hansen C.H., and Hansen R.D. Finding the face in the crowd: An anger superiority effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54 (1988) 917-924
14. Hugdahl K., and Johnsen B.H. Preparedness and electrodermal fear conditioning: Ontogenetic versus phylogenetic explanations. Behavior Research & Therapy 27 (1989) 269-278
15. Lang P.J., Bradley M.M., and Cuthbert B.N. The international affective picture system [CD-ROM] (1996), University of Gainesville, National Institute of Mental Health Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention, Gainesville, FL
16. LeDoux J. The emotional brain (1996), Simon & Schuster, New York
17. McNally R.J. Preparedness and phobias: A review. Psychological Bulletin 101 (1987) 283-303
18. Murphy F.C., Nimmo-Smith I., and Lawrence A.D. Functional neuroanatomy of emotions: A meta-analysis. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience 3 (2003) 207-233
19. Öhman A. Stimulus prepotency and fear learning: Data and theory. In: Birbaumer N., and Öhman A. (Eds). The structure of emotion: Psychophysiological, cognitive, and clinical aspects (1993), Hogrefe and Huber, Seattle, WA 218-239
20. Öhman A., Flykt A., and Esteves F. Emotion drives attention: Detecting the snake in the grass. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 130 (2001) 466-478
21. Öhman A., Lundqvist D., and Esteves F. The face in the crowd revisited: A threat advantage with schematic stimuli. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80 (2001) 381-396
22. Öhman A., and Mineka S. Fears, phobias, and preparedness: Towards an evolved module of fear and fear learning. Psychological Review 108 (2001) 483-522
23. Öhman A., and Mineka S. The malicious serpent: Snakes as a prototypical stimulus for an evolved module for fear. Current Directions in Psychological Science 12 (2003) 5-9
24. Sander D., Grafman J., and Zalla T. The human amygdala: An evolved system for relevance detection. Reviews in the Neurosciences 14 (2003) 303-316
25. Sander D., Grandjean D., and Scherer K.R. A systems approach to appraisal mechanisms in emotion. Neural Networks 18 (2005) 317-352
26. Seligman M.E.P. Phobias and preparedness. Behaviour Therapy 3 (1971) 307-320
27. Tomkins S.S. Affect, imagery, consciousness (1962), Springer, Berlin, Germany
28. Treisman A., and Souther J. Search asymmetry: A diagnostic for preattentive processing of separable features. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 114 (1985) 285-310