title: Covariation bias for blood-injury stimuli and aversive outcomes.
abstract: Three illusory correlation experiments were conducted to determine whether a fear-relevant covariation bias (Tomarken, Mineka & Cook, 1989, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 98, 381-394) could be demonstrated using different types of fear-relevant stimuli from the blood-injury phobia category. In each experiment, women high and low on blood-injury fear were presented with fear-relevant slides depicting blood or injury, as well as slides from two neutral categories. A shock (aversive outcome), or a tone or no outcome (neutral outcomes) followed each by the 72 slides. Although the relationship between slide types and outcomes was random, subjects in all three experiments overestimated the co-occurrence of shock and blood-injury slides relative to all other slide-outcome combinations. However, there was no significant effect of blood-injury fear on this bias, indicating that, regardless of their blood-injury fear level, humans show an associative bias to selectively associate blood-injury stimuli with aversive outcomes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-2710, USA.
authors.forename: C L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Pury
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mineka
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007088:Illusions / Q000502:physiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology; D010865:Pilot Projects; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000523:psychology*