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Fear of eyes: triadic relation among social anxiety, trypophobia, and discomfort for eye cluster

Imagine you are being gazed at by multiple individuals simultaneously. Is the provoked anxiety a learned social-specific response or related to a pathological disorder known as trypophobia? A previous study revealed that spectral properties of images induced aversive reactions in observers with tryp...

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Autores principales: Chaya, Kengo, Xue, Yuting, Uto, Yusuke, Yao, Qirui, Yamada, Yuki
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4860305/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27168967
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1942
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author Chaya, Kengo
Xue, Yuting
Uto, Yusuke
Yao, Qirui
Yamada, Yuki
author_facet Chaya, Kengo
Xue, Yuting
Uto, Yusuke
Yao, Qirui
Yamada, Yuki
author_sort Chaya, Kengo
collection PubMed
description Imagine you are being gazed at by multiple individuals simultaneously. Is the provoked anxiety a learned social-specific response or related to a pathological disorder known as trypophobia? A previous study revealed that spectral properties of images induced aversive reactions in observers with trypophobia. However, it is not clear whether individual differences such as social anxiety traits are related to the discomfort associated with trypophobic images. To investigate this issue, we conducted two experiments with social anxiety and trypophobia and images of eyes and faces. In Experiment 1, participants completed a social anxiety scale and trypophobia questionnaire before evaluation of the discomfort experienced upon exposure to pictures of eye. The results showed that social anxiety had a significant indirect effect on the discomfort associated with the eye clusters, and that the effect was mediated by trypophobia. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 using images of human face. The results showed that, as in Experiment 1, a significant mediation effect of trypophobia was obtained, although the relationship between social anxiety and the discomfort rating was stronger than in Experiment 1. Our findings suggest that both social anxiety and trypophobia contribute to the induction of discomfort when one is gazed at by many people.
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spelling pubmed-48603052016-05-10 Fear of eyes: triadic relation among social anxiety, trypophobia, and discomfort for eye cluster Chaya, Kengo Xue, Yuting Uto, Yusuke Yao, Qirui Yamada, Yuki PeerJ Ophthalmology Imagine you are being gazed at by multiple individuals simultaneously. Is the provoked anxiety a learned social-specific response or related to a pathological disorder known as trypophobia? A previous study revealed that spectral properties of images induced aversive reactions in observers with trypophobia. However, it is not clear whether individual differences such as social anxiety traits are related to the discomfort associated with trypophobic images. To investigate this issue, we conducted two experiments with social anxiety and trypophobia and images of eyes and faces. In Experiment 1, participants completed a social anxiety scale and trypophobia questionnaire before evaluation of the discomfort experienced upon exposure to pictures of eye. The results showed that social anxiety had a significant indirect effect on the discomfort associated with the eye clusters, and that the effect was mediated by trypophobia. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 using images of human face. The results showed that, as in Experiment 1, a significant mediation effect of trypophobia was obtained, although the relationship between social anxiety and the discomfort rating was stronger than in Experiment 1. Our findings suggest that both social anxiety and trypophobia contribute to the induction of discomfort when one is gazed at by many people. PeerJ Inc. 2016-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC4860305/ /pubmed/27168967 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1942 Text en ©2016 Chaya et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Ophthalmology
Chaya, Kengo
Xue, Yuting
Uto, Yusuke
Yao, Qirui
Yamada, Yuki
Fear of eyes: triadic relation among social anxiety, trypophobia, and discomfort for eye cluster
title Fear of eyes: triadic relation among social anxiety, trypophobia, and discomfort for eye cluster
title_full Fear of eyes: triadic relation among social anxiety, trypophobia, and discomfort for eye cluster
title_fullStr Fear of eyes: triadic relation among social anxiety, trypophobia, and discomfort for eye cluster
title_full_unstemmed Fear of eyes: triadic relation among social anxiety, trypophobia, and discomfort for eye cluster
title_short Fear of eyes: triadic relation among social anxiety, trypophobia, and discomfort for eye cluster
title_sort fear of eyes: triadic relation among social anxiety, trypophobia, and discomfort for eye cluster
topic Ophthalmology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4860305/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27168967
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1942
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