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Davey, Graham C L, Cavanagh, Kate and Lamb, Alice (2003) Differential aversive outcome expectancies for high- and low-predation fear-relevant animals. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 34 (2). pp. 117-128. ISSN 0005-7916
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
There is now considerable evidence that phobic responding is associated with a bias towards expecting aversive or traumatic outcomes following encounters with the phobic stimulus (e.g. Behavioural Brain Sci. 18 (1995) 289–325; Phobias: A Handbook of Theory, Research and Treatment. Wiley, Chichester, 1997). In terms of conditioning contingencies, this can be described as a bias towards expecting an aversive unconditioned stimulus (UCS) following a phobic conditioned stimulus (CS). The disease-avoidance model of animal fears (Anxiety Res. 4 (1992a) 314; Matchett and Davey, 1991) suggests that common animal fears may be mediated by at least two kinds of selective associations: (1) a bias towards expecting physically harmful consequences associated with predatory animals, and (2) a bias towards expecting disgust or disease-relevant consequences associated with animals that are fear-relevant (FR) but normally physically harmless. The present study investigated this model of selective associations by comparing the UCS expectations elicited by high-predation FR, low-predation FR and safe (fear-irrelevant) animals. The results indicate that high-predation animals are selectively associated with a pain relevant UCS, whilst low-predation animals are selectively associated with a disgust-relevant UCS. Safe animals were not strongly associated with either class of UCS. These findings provide evidence for a possible associative mechanism by which changes in nonspecific levels of disgust sensitivity may directly affect levels of fear to low-predation FR animals.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Schools and Departments: | School of Psychology > Psychology |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology |
| Depositing User: | Graham Davey |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Dec 2006 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Jun 2013 10:40 |
| URI: | http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/666 |
| Google Scholar: | 24 Citations |