Physiological responses to trypophobic images and further scale validity of the trypophobia questionnaire

Pipitone, R. Nathan; Gallegos, Brandon; Walters, D E

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2016.11.068

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Following Sasaki et al (2017) we then categorized participants into high and low trypophobia groups [using the Trypophobia Questionnaire (TQ)] to assessed whether TQ levels impact viewing comfort to the different image categories. Finally, based on previous work (Le et al, 2015;Pipitone et al, 2017) we assessed how viewing comfort changes as participant's level of trypophobia changes across the four image manipulations. In addition to these main issues, we also tested whether or not subjective image ratings were robust to monitor properties and were consistent across different instances of our random phase-scrambling procedure.…”

Section: Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thirtyone trypophobic images (T1-T31) were used in this study. Some images were obtained from websites devoted to trypophobia (e.g., https://trypophobia.com/), while other images were provided by Arnold Wilkins and were used in Cole and Wilkins (2013), Pipitone et al (2017). All images were cropped to minimize nontrypophobic background imagery, resized to 512 × 512 pixels, converted to grayscale, scaled to 25% RMS contrast, and saved as 8-bit BMP files.…”

Section: Images and Image Manipulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the mixed model ANOVAs, using a medium effect size and an alpha of 0.05, the calculated sample size needed to achieve 80% power was 82 (we had 98). For the tests using Pearson correlation coefficients, we used a large effect size as the determinant based on previous literature (Le et al, 2015;Pipitone et al, 2017). The most stringent tests were going to be the correlations between comfort levels and TQ scores among high and low TRY participants.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Participants filled out the TQ, in order to assess whether levels of trypophobia would affect ratings of comfort as a function of image phase and amplitude spectra. Eleven participants had scores higher than 31 (7.4%) and would be considered trypophobic (Le et al, 2015) which is a smaller proportion than what others have reported in their samples (Cole and Wilkins, 2013;Pipitone et al, 2017). Following Sasaki et al 2017we ran analyses on participants who scored in the top and bottom third (33%) of the TQ.…”

Section: Tq Scores Phase and Amplitude On Comfort Levelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An example of a trypophobic image is shown in Figure 1A (top left). A small but sizable proportion of individuals qualify as being trypophobic (roughly 15-17%, Cole and Wilkins, 2013;Pipitone et al, 2017), and furthermore, many non-trypophobic individuals (Cole and Wilkins, 2013;Kupfer and Le, 2017;Pipitone et al, 2017) including children (Can et al, 2017) report experiencing some level of discomfort when viewing trypophobic images. Since its initial description in the scientific literature (Cole and Wilkins, 2013) there has been strong interest in trypophobia in both the scientific community and the popular media, with the Washington Post recently reporting that the cluster of camera lenses on Apple's new iPhone 11 may be triggering trypophobia (Shepherd, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Object Clusters or Spectral Energy? Assessing the Relative Contributions of Image Phase and Amplitude Spectra to Trypophobia

Pipitone

DiMattina

2020

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Trypophobia refers to the visual discomfort experienced by some people when viewing clustered patterns (e.g., clusters of holes). Trypophobic images deviate from the 1/f amplitude spectra typically characterizing natural images by containing excess energy at mid-range spatial frequencies. While recent work provides partial support for the idea of excess mid-range spatial frequency energy causing visual discomfort when viewing trypophobic images, a full factorial manipulation of image phase and amplitude spectra has yet to be conducted in order to determine whether the phase spectrum (sinusoidal waveform patterns that comprise image details like edge and texture elements) also plays a role in trypophobic discomfort. Here, we independently manipulated the phase and amplitude spectra of 31 Trypophobic images using a standard Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Participants rated the four different versions of each image for levels of visual comfort, and completed the Trypophobia Questionnaire (TQ). Images having the original phase spectra intact (with either original or 1/f amplitude) explained the most variance in comfort ratings and were rated lowest in comfort. However, images with the original amplitude spectra but scrambled phase spectra were rated higher in comfort, with a smaller amount of variance in comfort attributed to the amplitude spectrum. Participant TQ scores correlated with comfort ratings only for images having the original phase spectra intact. There was no correlation between TQ scores and comfort levels when participants viewed the original amplitude / phase-scrambled images. Taken together, the present findings show that the phase spectrum of trypophobic images, which determines the pattern of small clusters of objects, plays a much larger role than the amplitude spectrum in determining visual discomfort.

show abstract

Section: Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Images and Image Manipulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tq Scores Phase and Amplitude On Comfort Levelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Object Clusters or Spectral Energy? Assessing the Relative Contributions of Image Phase and Amplitude Spectra to Trypophobia

Pipitone

DiMattina

2020

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Why are we Afraid of Holes? A Brief Review of Trypophobia Through an Adaptationist Lens

Thiebaut,

Méot,

Prokop

et al. 2024

Evolutionary Psychological Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Trypophobia: Heart rate, heart rate variability and cortical haemodynamic response

Cole

Wilkins

2020

Journal of Affective Disorders

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Trypophobia is a common condition in which sufferers are averse to images of small holes arranged in clusters. Methods: We used photo-plethysmography to examine cardiovascular correlates and near infrared spectroscopy to examine cortical correlates of the phenomenon in order to validate the Trypophobia Questionnaire and explore the several interlinked explanations of the disorder. Results: Trypophobic images were found to increase heart rate and heart rate variability, but only in individuals with high scores on the Trypophobia Questionnaire. Trypophobic images were also found to elicit larger haemodynamic responses in posterior cortical areas, but again only in individuals with high scores. Limitations: The results are consistent with a contribution from both parasympathetic and sympathetic systems. Conclusion: The data demonstrate the validity of the Trypophobia Questionnaire and show an involvement not only of the autonomic system but cortical mechanisms including cortical hyperexcitability.

show abstract

Physiological responses to trypophobic images and further scale validity of the trypophobia questionnaire

Cited by 17 publications

References 8 publications

Object Clusters or Spectral Energy? Assessing the Relative Contributions of Image Phase and Amplitude Spectra to Trypophobia

Object Clusters or Spectral Energy? Assessing the Relative Contributions of Image Phase and Amplitude Spectra to Trypophobia

Why are we Afraid of Holes? A Brief Review of Trypophobia Through an Adaptationist Lens

Trypophobia: Heart rate, heart rate variability and cortical haemodynamic response

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About