Across three experiments, we investigated whether electrodermal responses conditioned to ontogenetic fear‐relevant (pointed guns) and phylogenetic fear‐relevant stimuli (snakes and spiders) would resist instructed extinction in a within‐participant differential fear conditioning paradigm. Instructed extinction involves informing participants before extinction that the unconditional stimulus (US) will no longer be presented. This manipulation has been shown to abolish fear conditioned to fear‐irrelevant conditional stimuli, but is said to leave fear conditioned to images of snakes and spiders intact. The latter finding, however, has only been demonstrated when fear‐relevance is manipulated between‐groups. It is also not known whether instructed extinction affects fear conditioned to ontogenetic fear‐relevant stimuli, such as pointed guns. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that fear conditioned to images of pointed guns does not resist instructed extinction. In Experiment 2, we detected some evidence to suggest that fear conditioned to images of snakes and spiders survives instructed extinction but this evidence was not conclusive. In Experiment 3, we directly compared the effects of instructed extinction on fear conditioned to snakes and spiders and to guns and provide strong evidence that fear conditioned to both classes of stimuli is reduced after instructed extinction with no differences between ontogenetic and phylogenetic stimuli. The current results suggest that when fear relevance is manipulated within‐participants fear conditioned to both phylogenetic and ontogenetic, fear‐relevant stimuli responds to instructed extinction providing evidence in favor of a socio‐cultural explanation for “preparedness” effects.

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We examined whether the inhibitory Conditional Stimulus (CS)-no Unconditional Stimulus (US) association formed during extinction can be triggered by a novel US during the reinstatement of conditional electrodermal responding and self-reported CS valence in human differential fear conditioning. Participants were trained with either a shock or an aversive scream US before undergoing extinction. Participants then received either the same (i.e., shock_shock or scream_scream) or a different US during reinstatement (i.e., shock_scream, scream_shock). Differential conditioning across all indices was stronger when a shock US was used during acquisition. After reinstatement, electrodermal responding to both the CS+ and the CS− increased regardless of the type of US used during reinstatement (non-differential reinstatement). Differential CS valence evaluations were larger after reinstatement in the groups that received the same US during acquisition and reinstatement (differential reinstatement), but differential evaluations did not increase in the groups receiving a different US at reinstatement. This dissociation suggests that the reinstatement of negative stimulus valence and the reinstatement of expectancy learning may differ.