Abstract
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.
Highlights
Trypophobia is an irrational fear of holes
In one pioneering study of trypophobia conducted by Cole & Wilkins (2013), it was found that the images that give rise to aversive reactions are not always holes
They explained this phenomenon in terms of the ‘‘visual system as a spatial frequency analyzer’’ (Maffei & Fiorentini, 1973) based on the fact that trypophobic images contain relatively high contrast at midrange spatial frequencies
Summary
Trypophobia is an irrational fear of holes. Typically, trypophobic images are composed of holes such as the seed head of the lotus flower or a honeycomb. In one pioneering study of trypophobia conducted by Cole & Wilkins (2013), it was found that the images that give rise to aversive reactions are not always holes They explained this phenomenon in terms of the ‘‘visual system as a spatial frequency analyzer’’ (Maffei & Fiorentini, 1973) based on the fact that trypophobic images contain relatively high contrast at midrange spatial frequencies. This spectral feature is not a sufficient condition for eliciting trypophobic aversion, as indicated by Cole and Wilkins, they found that even normal individuals are more sensitive and averse to trypophobic images than
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