“Prepared” fear or socio‐cultural learning? Fear conditioned to guns, snakes, and spiders is eliminated by instructed extinction in a within‐participant differential fear conditioning paradigm

Abstract

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.

Specificity of spiders among fear- and disgust-eliciting arthropods: Spiders are special, but phobics not so much

“…This method facilitates extinction in fear irrelevant stimuli, however if the fear relevant stimuli were images of snakes and spiders, the fear was not sensitive to instructed extinction [ 37 , reviewed in 38 ]. Nonetheless it was also shown that acquired fear inhibition can be modulated by participants’ sensitivity to fear of spiders [ 34 ] and lately, this line of argumentation has been questioned [ 39 – 41 ]. Three, respondents are attracted or distracted by spiders in visual attention tasks [ 42 – 44 ] suggesting spiders may be evolutionarily persistent threat specified for visual detection and attention capture.…”

Conditional stimulus choices affect fear learning: Comparing fear conditioning with neutral faces and shapes or angry faces

“…The critical difference between these studies again appears to be the use of a within-subjects design, which was not used in the current study. Future research should carefully evaluate the comparability of findings from within-subjects fear conditioning experiments to between-subjects designs, as our present data seem to suggest that they may not be directly comparable in all situations (see also Luck et al, 2020).…”

“…However, more recent evidence suggests that fear conditioned to fear‐relevant face or animal stimuli is not resistant to instructed fear extinction (Luck et al, 2020; Mallan et al, 2013; Pitman & Orr, 1986), which contradicts Seligman's (1971) notion of a qualitatively different “prepared” learning. Moreover, a recent systematic review found that only one‐third of published studies found support for increased resistance to extinction of fear conditioned to animal fear‐relevant CSs, which strongly challenges the preparedness theory, at least in the context of experimental fear conditioning and extinction (Åhs et al, 2018).…”

Snakes vs. Guns: a Systematic Review of Comparisons Between Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Threats

“…Flykt et al (2007) use of backward masking (brief exposure to target CS for 25 ms immediately followed by exposure to a mask for 125 ms) with the aim of investigating unconscious processing of threats makes it incomparable with others. Yet Luck et al (2020) study is different in its within-subject design and use of instructed extinction (informing participants about the absence of US before extinction trials) to see whether the criterion of encapsulation from cognition is met. The variety of US is also evident as some studies have used electric shocks, others have utilized an aversive tone, yet some have applied both.…”