title: Approach and avoidance in fear of spiders.
abstract: We examined attitudes towards spiders by employing an Approach-Avoidance Task, in which participants respond to pictures by pulling a joystick towards themselves or by pushing it away from themselves. For spider fearfuls, this stimulus-response assignment is either compatible (push spiders away) or incompatible (pull spiders closer). Specific compatibility effects were found: compared to non-anxious controls and control pictures, highly spider fearful participants responded to spider pictures more quickly by pushing than by pulling, even when picture contents was task-irrelevant. Moreover, compatibility effects predicted fear-related behavior independently of questionnaires. Potential applications, extensions, and limitations of the findings are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Dresden University of Technology, Germany. m.rinck@psych.ru.nl <m.rinck@psych.ru.nl>
authors.forename: Mike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rinck
authors.forename: Eni S
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Becker
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001143:Arousal; D001290:Attitude; D001332:Automatism / Q000523:psychology; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D001364:Awareness; D005239:Fear; D006801:Humans; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D013112:Spiders; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires