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Understanding animal fears: a comparison of the cognitive vulnerability and harm-looming models

BACKGROUND: The Cognitive Vulnerability Model holds that both clinical and sub-clinical manifestations of animal fears are a result of how an animal is perceived, and can be used to explain both individual differences in fear acquisition and the uneven distribution of fears in the population. This s...

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Autor principal: Armfield, Jason M
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2007
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2217538/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18053147
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-7-68
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author Armfield, Jason M
author_facet Armfield, Jason M
author_sort Armfield, Jason M
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The Cognitive Vulnerability Model holds that both clinical and sub-clinical manifestations of animal fears are a result of how an animal is perceived, and can be used to explain both individual differences in fear acquisition and the uneven distribution of fears in the population. This study looked at the association between fear of a number of animals and perceptions of the animals as uncontrollable, unpredictable, dangerous and disgusting. Also assessed were the perceived loomingness, prior familiarity, and negative evaluation of the animals as well as possible conditioning experiences. METHODS: 162 first-year University students rated their fear and perceptions of four high-fear and four low-fear animals. RESULTS: Perceptions of the animals as dangerous, disgusting and uncontrollable were significantly associated with fear of both high- and low-fear animals while perceptions of unpredictability were significantly associated with fear of high-fear animals. Conditioning experiences were unrelated to fear of any animals. In multiple regression analyses, loomingness did not account for a significant amount of the variance in fear beyond that accounted for by the cognitive vulnerability variables. However, the vulnerability variables accounted for between 20% and 51% of the variance in all animals fears beyond that accounted for by perceptions of the animals as looming. Perceptions of dangerousness, uncontrollability and unpredictability were highly predictive of the uneven distribution of animal fears. CONCLUSION: This study provides support for the Cognitive Vulnerability Model of the etiology of specific fears and phobias and brings into question the utility of the harm-looming model in explaining animal fear.
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spelling pubmed-22175382008-01-30 Understanding animal fears: a comparison of the cognitive vulnerability and harm-looming models Armfield, Jason M BMC Psychiatry Research Article BACKGROUND: The Cognitive Vulnerability Model holds that both clinical and sub-clinical manifestations of animal fears are a result of how an animal is perceived, and can be used to explain both individual differences in fear acquisition and the uneven distribution of fears in the population. This study looked at the association between fear of a number of animals and perceptions of the animals as uncontrollable, unpredictable, dangerous and disgusting. Also assessed were the perceived loomingness, prior familiarity, and negative evaluation of the animals as well as possible conditioning experiences. METHODS: 162 first-year University students rated their fear and perceptions of four high-fear and four low-fear animals. RESULTS: Perceptions of the animals as dangerous, disgusting and uncontrollable were significantly associated with fear of both high- and low-fear animals while perceptions of unpredictability were significantly associated with fear of high-fear animals. Conditioning experiences were unrelated to fear of any animals. In multiple regression analyses, loomingness did not account for a significant amount of the variance in fear beyond that accounted for by the cognitive vulnerability variables. However, the vulnerability variables accounted for between 20% and 51% of the variance in all animals fears beyond that accounted for by perceptions of the animals as looming. Perceptions of dangerousness, uncontrollability and unpredictability were highly predictive of the uneven distribution of animal fears. CONCLUSION: This study provides support for the Cognitive Vulnerability Model of the etiology of specific fears and phobias and brings into question the utility of the harm-looming model in explaining animal fear. BioMed Central 2007-12-01 /pmc/articles/PMC2217538/ /pubmed/18053147 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-7-68 Text en Copyright © 2007 Armfield; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Armfield, Jason M
Understanding animal fears: a comparison of the cognitive vulnerability and harm-looming models
title Understanding animal fears: a comparison of the cognitive vulnerability and harm-looming models
title_full Understanding animal fears: a comparison of the cognitive vulnerability and harm-looming models
title_fullStr Understanding animal fears: a comparison of the cognitive vulnerability and harm-looming models
title_full_unstemmed Understanding animal fears: a comparison of the cognitive vulnerability and harm-looming models
title_short Understanding animal fears: a comparison of the cognitive vulnerability and harm-looming models
title_sort understanding animal fears: a comparison of the cognitive vulnerability and harm-looming models
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2217538/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18053147
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-7-68
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