Is a snake scarier than a gun? The ontogenetic–phylogenetic dispute from a new perspective: The role of arousal.

Zsidó, András N.; Deák, Anita; Bernáth, László

doi:10.1037/emo0000478

Cited by 27 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 43 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Due to a long co-evolutionary history with snakes, both humans and non-human primates evolved specific neural mechanisms for rapid snake recognition (Isbell, 2006; LoBue and DeLoache, 2008; Öhman et al, 2012; Van Le et al, 2013; Baynes-Rock, 2017). Among evolutionarily irrelevant (neutral) stimuli, snake pictures act as strong distractors (Soares et al, 2009a) and are detected faster (LoBue and Deloache, 2011; Soares et al, 2014) than, for example, flowers and mushrooms, but not faster than stimuli of modern threats such as guns (Fox et al, 2007; Zsido et al, 2018b). Moreover, EEG studies show that neural processing of snake stimuli is prioritized when compared to other animals such as spiders and birds (van Strien et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Snakes Represent Emotionally Salient Stimuli That May Evoke Both Fear and Disgust

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Humans perceive snakes as threatening stimuli, resulting in fast emotional and behavioral responses. However, snake species differ in their true level of danger and are highly variable in appearance despite the uniform legless form. Different snakes may evoke fear or disgust in humans, or even both emotions simultaneously. We designed three-step-selection experiments to identify prototypical snake species evoking exclusively fear or disgust. First, two independent groups of respondents evaluated 45 images covering most of the natural variability of snakes and rated responses to either perceived fear ( n = 175) or disgust ( n = 167). Snakes rated as the most fear-evoking were from the family Viperidae ( Crotalinae , Viperinae , and Azemiopinae ), while the ones rated as the most disgusting were from the group of blind snakes called Typhlopoidea ( Xenotyphlopinae , Typhlopinae , and Anomalepidinae ). We then identified the specific traits contributing to the perception of fear (large body size, expressive scales with contrasting patterns, and bright coloration) and disgust (thin body, smooth texture, small eyes, and dull coloration). Second, to create stimuli evoking a discrete emotional response, we developed a picture set consisting of 40 snakes with exclusively fear-eliciting and 40 snakes with disgust-eliciting features. Another set of respondents ( n = 172) sorted the set, once according to perceived fear and the second time according to perceived disgust. The results showed that the fear-evoking and disgust-evoking snakes fit mainly into their respective groups. Third, we randomly selected 20 species (10 fear-evoking and 10 disgust-evoking) out of the previous set and had them professionally illustrated. A new set of subjects ( n = 104) sorted these snakes and confirmed that the illustrated snakes evoked the same discrete emotions as their photographic counterparts. These illustrations are included in the study and may be freely used as a standardized assessment tool when investigating the role of fear and disgust in human emotional response to snakes.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Snakes Represent Emotionally Salient Stimuli That May Evoke Both Fear and Disgust

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Thus, providing another explanation to why humans might detect snakes quickly in laboratory tasks. However, this theory is not able to explain why, for example, people can detect guns faster (e.g., Zsido et al, 2018b) or why snakes are detected faster than birds (e.g., Van Strien and Isbell, 2017).…”

Section: Non-modular Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Subra et al, 2018; Zsido et al, 2018a) using various paradigms that a modern threatening stimulus could lead to similar behavior as an evolutionary relevant one. For instance, when modern (e.g., gun) and evolutionary (e.g., snake) targets are compared directly in the classical visual search task proposed by Öhman and colleagues (see e.g., Öhman et al, 2001), the modern threatening target caught participants attention faster than evolutionary ones (Zsido et al, 2018b).…”

Section: Data Incompatible With Modular Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consequently, a wide range of innovative structures has evolved to facilitate the delivery of venoms, such as “ barbs, beaks, fangs modified teeth, harpoons, nematocysts, pincers, proboscises, spines, sprays, spurs, and stingers ” (Casewell et al, 2013, p. 219). Considering the multitude of threat sources, it seems to be more useful to have a general preparedness (see e.g., Davey, 1995; Coelho and Purkis, 2009; Zsido et al, 2018a,b,c) to detect and respond to animate or sharp objects in general. Evolving a module for each of these animals or features would be impractical.…”

Section: Non-modular Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Are Humans Prepared to Detect, Fear, and Avoid Snakes? The Mismatch Between Laboratory and Ecological Evidence

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since Seligman (1971) statement that the vast majority of phobias are about objects essential to the survival of a species, a multitude of laboratory studies followed, supporting the finding that humans learn to fear and detect snakes (and other animals) faster than other stimuli. Most of these studies used schematic drawings, images, or pictures of snakes, and only a small amount of fieldwork in naturalistic environments was done. We address fear preparedness theories and automatic fast detection data from mainstream laboratory data and compare it with ethobehavioral information relative to snakes, predator-prey interaction, and snakes’ defensive kinematics strikes in order to analyze their potential matching. From this analysis, four main findings arose, namely that (1) snakebites occur when people are very close to the snake and are unaware or unable to escape the bite; (2) human visual detection and escape response is slow compared to the speed of snake strikes; (3) in natural environments, snake experts are often unable to see snakes existing nearby; (4) animate objects in general capture more attention over other stimuli and dangerous, but recent objects in evolutionary terms are also able to be detected fast. The issues mentioned above pose several challenges to evolutionary psychology-based theories expecting to find special-purpose neural modules. The older selective habituation hypothesis (Schleidt, 1961) that prey animals start with a rather general predator image from which specific harmless cues are removed by habituation might deserve reconsideration.

show abstract

“…Their reactions were measured by pressing different keys. In the past decade, this paradigm became widely used in experiments with both adults (Blanchette, 2006; Soares et al, 2009a; Zsido et al, 2018b) and children (LoBue, 2010; LoBue et al, 2014; Zsido et al, 2018c) participants.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Threat Have an Advantage After All? – Proposing a Novel Experimental Design to Investigate the Advantages of Threat-Relevant Cues in Visual Processing

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The automatic visual attentional procession of threatening stimuli over non-threatening cues has long been a question. The so-called classical visual search task (VST) has quickly become the go-to paradigm to investigate this. However, the latest results showed that the confounding results could originate from the shortcomings of the VST. Thus, here we propose a novel approach to the behavioral testing of the threat superiority effect. We conducted two experiments using evolutionary relevant and modern real-life scenes (e.g., forest or street, respectively) as a background to improve ecological validity. Participants had to find different targets in different spatial positions (close to fovea or periphery) using a touch-screen monitor. In Experiment 1 participants had to find the two most often used exemplar of the evolutionary and modern threatening categories (snake and gun, respectively), or neutral objects of the same category. In Experiment 2 we used more exemplars of each category. All images used were controlled for possible confounding low-level visual features such as contrast, frequency, brightness, and image complexity. In Experiment 1, threatening targets were found faster compared to neutral cues irrespective of the evolutionary relevance. However, in Experiment 2, we did not find an advantage for threatening targets over neutral ones. In contrast, the type of background, and spatial position of the target only affected the detection of neutral targets. Our results might indicate that some stimuli indeed have an advantage in visual processing, however, they are not highlighted based on evolutionary relevance of negative valence alone, but rather through different associational mechanisms.

show abstract

Is a snake scarier than a gun? The ontogenetic–phylogenetic dispute from a new perspective: The role of arousal.

Cited by 27 publications

References 43 publications

Snakes Represent Emotionally Salient Stimuli That May Evoke Both Fear and Disgust

Snakes Represent Emotionally Salient Stimuli That May Evoke Both Fear and Disgust

Are Humans Prepared to Detect, Fear, and Avoid Snakes? The Mismatch Between Laboratory and Ecological Evidence

Does Threat Have an Advantage After All? – Proposing a Novel Experimental Design to Investigate the Advantages of Threat-Relevant Cues in Visual Processing

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About