Abstract
Objective: The current study aimed to examine implicit disgust associations between blood injection-injury (BII) phobic and non-phobic individuals. Method: The implicit disgust associations between 30 blood-injection-injury (BII) phobic 30 and non-phobic individuals were evaluated following 30-minute in vivo exposure to a disgust eliciting stimulus (severed deer leg). Participants engaged in an implicit association test (IAT), prior to and following exposure to determine the strength of implicit associations regarding the concept of disgust. Participants also engaged in a behavior approach/avoidance task (BAT) with a vial of blood at the same time points to determine if disgust elicited by the deer leg was generalizable to a BII-specific disgust-elicitor. IAT and BAT assessments were then repeated one week following exposure. Results: A significant change in implicit associations was found from pre-exposure to follow-up. There was also a significant decrease in avoidance to the BAT from pre-exposure to follow-up. Conclusions: BII phobic individuals underwent a cognitive change and lessening of disgust associations.
Highlights
Blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia is a subtype of specific phobia characterized by anxiety or fear prompted by encountering blood or injuries, by seeing or having to receive an injection, or any other type of invasive medical procedure [1]
It was predicted that after undergoing 30 minutes of exposure to an animal reminder disgust elicitor [7], participants categorized as BII phobic would have significantly slower reaction times on the disgust implicit association test (IAT) than they did at baseline
Independent samples t-tests were conducted for each subscale of the Disgust Scale-Revised (DS-R) to determine whether or not there was a difference in means between BII phobic and non-phobic individuals
Summary
Blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia is a subtype of specific phobia characterized by anxiety or fear prompted by encountering blood or injuries, by seeing or having to receive an injection, or any other type of invasive medical procedure [1]. Individuals with a specific phobia are likely to have cognitions containing maladaptive beliefs that focus on physical or psychological threats resulting from encounters with the feared stimuli despite the fact that these beliefs are not necessarily accurate or supported by evidence from experience. Such beliefs serve to constantly reinforce anxiety, and symptoms cannot be alleviated without a change in the fear schema [4,6]. Animal reminder disgust is the type most commonly examined in relation to BII phobia [10,11]
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