Cockroaches are scarier than snakes and spiders: Validation of an affective standardized set of animal images (ASSAI)

Abstract

Research on emotional processes has been closely related to the use of emotional stimuli, promoting the development of different standardized sets of images. However, some kinds of images that would be relevant in clinical psychology research are not available, especially for small animal phobias. The aim of the present study is to validate a set of animal images that includes images of cockroaches, which are not present in the current sets of images. Two hundred and forty images depicting five types of animals (cockroaches, spiders, snakes, cats, and butterflies) were collected from online public domains. Four hundred and twenty-four participants (72.9% women) took part in the study rating the images in two affective dimensions (i.e., valence and arousal). Cockroach pictures were rated as significantly more unpleasant than pictures of spiders, snakes, butterflies, and cats. Moreover, results revealed that women rated cockroach, spider, and snake pictures as more negative than men did. Also, women in comparison with men rated cockroach images as more arousing. The results highlight the importance of using images of cockroaches, due to their high negative valence, which even exceeds that of snakes and spiders, the unpleasant animals typically used in phobic research. This set of images can be useful in research on small-animal phobias.

Emotions triggered by live arthropods shed light on spider phobia

“…We found them scoring low in fear, intermediate in disgust, and very low in beauty, where they ranked as the least beautiful of all the arthropod groups. This was surprising to us, given that in the study of Grimaldos García et al 41 , cockroaches were perceived very negatively even in comparison to spiders and snakes. However, that study did not look at fear or disgust, but rather valence and arousal ratings of a series of photographs.…”

“…In line with the focus of our study, about half of the used species were chelicerates—15 spiders, 10 scorpions, and 5 other arachnids. Two specific arthropod phobias have been described—the already mentioned arachnophobia and the phobia of cockroaches 40 , 41 . For this reason, we also included 10 species of cockroaches, and 10 species of other hemimetabolous insects (i.e., four phasmids, two locusts, two praying mantises, a true bug, and an earwig) as a control group.…”

Nature relatedness: A protective factor for snake and spider fears and phobias

“…Certain limitation is that we used self‐report surveys and questions rather than structured diagnostic interviews. Finally, one might argue that having only 10 pictures per category (snakes and spiders) for evaluation can provide only limited information (see also Grimaldos et al, 2021), so the number of picture stimuli should be increased in future research. Although here we have used the dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance to evaluate the visual stimuli, there is another approach corresponding more to the concept of discrete emotions that would rate the pictures according to fear and disgust.…”

Do Humans Possess a Superior Location Memory for Snakes?

“…In this case, mushroom images were replaced by cockroaches (Lobue, 2010). A recent study found that cockroaches were rated as significantly more unpleasant than snakes and spiders, while all three were viewed as equally arousing (Grimaldos et al, 2021). Therefore, this study included three image categories that were all high in arousal, while also providing the opportunity to differentiate between image categories by threat (snakes and spiders > cockroaches) and negative valence (cockroaches > snakes and spiders).…”