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

Abstract

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.

Trypophobia, skin disease, and the visual discomfort of natural textures

“…Our set of Trypophobia-inducing stimuli (TRY) was a set of 5 textures found in previous research to cause the greatest trypophobic visual discomfort, illustrated in Fig. 1b (Pipitone & DiMattina, 2020). Finally, 9 disease (DIS) textures were obtained from the web, representing a variety of skin conditions, including smallpox, pitted keratolysis, and cystic acne (Fig.…”

“…Despite the fact that trypophobic stimuli are natural textures, they have not been well-studied in the context of texture perception or are represented in the literature on visual comfort/discomfort elicited by specifically by textures (Jacobs et al, 2016), although there have been efforts to explain trypophobia in terms of lower-level image statistics (Can et al, 2017;Cole & Wilkins, 2013;Le et al, 2020;Sasaki et al, 2017). The literature on trypophobia has generally used non-texture control stimuli, for instance, images containing circular objects and/or single holes (Le et al, 2015;Pipitone & DiMattina, 2020;Shirai & Ogawa, 2019), or very limited sets of control textures with some visual characteristics (e.g., holes) which match trypophobic imagery (Kupfer & Le, 2018a).…”

“…Utilizing the Trypophobia Questionnaire (TQ) (Le et al, 2015), we measured levels of trypophobia in a sample of participants and define high-trypophobia (hi-TQ) and low-trypophobia (lo-TQ) populations. We measured the visual comfort elicited by a set of 56 representative natural textures from the Brodatz (BDZ) database used in previous psychophysical studies (Rao & Lohse, 1993, together with the visual comfort elicited by 5 trypophobic textures (Pipitone & DiMattina, 2020) and 9 disease (DIS) textures. We show that while lo-TQ and hi-TQ people find images of disease similarly unpleasant, only hi-TQ individuals find TRY images as unpleasant as those of disease.…”

An exploration of the nomological network of trypophobia

“…Much of the literature on trypophobia has been dedicated to the (neuro)physiological reactions to trypophobic stimuli (e.g., [ 8 , 11 ]) and the characteristics of trypophobic images linked with aversion (e.g., [ 13 ]). The nomological network of trypophobia has to date been largely unexplored.…”

“…A study found a weak relationship between trait anxiety and such symptoms—but only in a cohort of trypophobic individuals; furthermore, the study found no difference in trait anxiety between participants from a trypophobia support group and those from a university group [ 16 ]. Generalized anxiety was not found to be correlated with symptoms of trypophobia [ 13 ]. Positive relationships were reported between symptoms of trypophobia and, notably, disgust sensitivity [ 17 ] and pathogen disgust [ 6 ].…”