Understanding animal fears: a comparison of the cognitive vulnerability and harm-looming models
Understanding animal fears: a comparison of the cognitive vulnerability and harm-looming models
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DOI：
10.1186/1471-244x-7-68
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发表时间：
2007-12-01
期刊：
影响因子：
4.4
通讯作者：
Armfield, Jason M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Armfield, Jason M.
背景：认知脆弱性模型认为，动物恐惧的临床和亚临床表现都是动物被感知的结果，可以用来解释恐惧习得的个体差异和恐惧在人群中的不均匀分布。这项研究着眼于对一些动物的恐惧与对这些动物不可控制、不可预测、危险和恶心的看法之间的联系。还评估了感知的隐隐约约、先前的熟悉程度、对动物的负面评价以及可能的条件反射经验。方法：162名大学一年级学生对四种高恐惧动物和四种低恐惧动物的恐惧和感知进行了评分。结果：对危险、恶心和无法控制的动物的感知与对高恐惧和低恐惧动物的恐惧显著相关，而对不可预测性的感知与对高恐惧动物的恐惧显著相关。条件反射经验与对任何动物的恐惧无关。在多元回归分析中，除了认知脆弱性变量之外，临危不惧并没有解释恐惧的显著差异。然而，在所有动物的恐惧中，脆弱性变量占了20%到51%的差异，超出了对动物迫在眉睫的感知。对危险、不可控和不可预测性的感知高度预测了动物恐惧的不均匀分布。结论：本研究为特定恐惧和恐惧症病因的认知脆弱性模型提供了支持，并对伤害逼近模型在解释动物恐惧中的实用性提出了质疑。
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.