Published in

Elsevier, Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 3(38), p. 263-274

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2006.09.001

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Blood-injection-injury fears: Harm- vs. disgust-relevant selective outcome associations

Journal article published in 2007 by Peter J. de Jong ORCID, Madelon L. Peters
This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia is qualitatively different from the other specific phobias in the sense that phobic distress takes the form of disgust rather than (threat-induced) fear. Following this, we tested the relative importance of harm and disgust-related associative biases in BII-fear. High (n=25) and low (n=27) fearful individuals saw a series of fear-relevant (blood-related) and fear-irrelevant (rabbit and flower) slides which were randomly paired with either a harm-related outcome, a disgust-related outcome, or nothing. Preexperimentally, participants expected blood-related slides to be followed by both disgust- and harm-relevant outcomes. These selective preexperimental outcome expectancies were readily corrected during the experiment. Neither low nor high fearful participants showed a postexperimental covariation bias. The absence of differential effects between high and low fearful participants does not support the idea that disgust- or harm-relevant associative biases play a role in the maintenance of BII-fears. The results corroborate the previous finding of Pury and Mineka [1997. Covariation bias for blood-injury stimuli and aversive outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 35, 35-47] that people are generally liable to selectively associate BII-stimuli with aversive outcomes.