The role of cognitions, trait anxiety and disgust sensitivity in generating faintness around blood–injury phobic stimuli

Behavioral avoidance and self-reported fainting symptoms in blood/injury fearful individuals: An experimental test of disgust domain specificity

“…One possibility is that disgust sensitivity, specifically towards animal reminder stimuli, contributes to fainting in BI phobia by amplifying fear reactions (i.e., Woody & Teachman, 2000). However, Exeter-Kent and Page (2006) recently found that blood stimuli produced the greatest increase in faintness when participants who were high in both trait anxiety and disgust sensitivity were exposed to a pain script. This finding highlights the possibility that an additional pathway to fainting in BI phobia may involve the interaction of fear-based and disgust-based vulnerabilities.…”

Disgust: the disease-avoidance emotion and its dysfunctions

“…While there is some evidence that disgust sensitivity interacts with trait anxiety to generate feelings of faintness typical of BII [76], evidence associating BII with disgust has come mainly from studies of facial expression and from psychophysiological data. For example, in studies examining distinctive facial expressions to phobogenic stimuli, Lumley & Melamed [61] found that BII phobics displayed significantly more facial expressions of disgust than non-phobics.…”

Disgust, anxiety, and vasovagal syncope sensations: A comparison of injection-fearful and nonfearful blood donors

“…Among fearful or phobic individuals, the association between disgust and fainting symptoms may manifest as a function of the covariation of disgust with anxiety. Indeed, Exeter-Kent and Page (2006) found fainting symptoms were experienced only among individuals sensitive to disgust and high in trait anxiety when presented with feelings of pain during exposure to blood. Anxiety and disgust also accounted for significant variance in the unpleasantness of the donation experience for nonfearful participants, but did not for injection-fearful donors.…”

“…To date, this research question has largely been addressed with questionnaire measures completed by undergraduate students (Kleinknecht et al, 1997;Olatunji et al, 2006) or in the experimental laboratory (Exeter-Kent & Page, 2006;Page, 2003). Surprisingly, no study to date has examined the relationship between disgust and fainting among blood donors, where fainting is often problematic (France, France, Roussos, & Ditto, 2004;France, Rader, & Carlson, 2005).…”