Abstract
This study used the classical conditioned acquisition and extinction paradigm to compare which of the two emotions, acquired disgust and acquired fear, was more difficult to extinguish, based on behavioral assessments and the event-related potential (ERP) technique. Behavioral assessments revealed that, following successful conditioned extinction, acquired disgust was more difficult to extinguish. The ERP results showed that, at the early stage of P1, the amplitude of conditioned fear was significantly smaller than that of conditioned disgust, and both were significantly different from the amplitude under neutral conditions; at the middle stage of N2, the difference between the amplitudes of conditioned disgust and conditioned fear disappeared, but they were still significantly different from the amplitudes of conditioned neutral stimuli; at the late stage of P3, the difference between conditioned disgust and conditioned neutral stimuli disappeared, but the difference between conditioned fear and neutral stimuli remained, suggesting that acquired fear was more difficult to extinguish than acquired disgust in terms of how the brain works.
Highlights
Fear and disgust are intense and unpleasant emotions
This study examines the differences between the extinction of conditioned disgust and that of conditioned fear from behavioral and cognitive neurological perspectives with a focus on comparing the differences in the course of extinction
According to the event-related potential (ERP) results, we found that disgust, following conditioned extinction training, was more difficult to extinguish than fear at the behavioral level
Summary
Fear and disgust are intense and unpleasant emotions. They share some common features: both represent a central threat emotion in psychopathology, underlying distress, and avoidant behavior toward biological and psychological contamination and violation (Rosen and Schulkin, 1988). They are more often independent of each other. There have been many studies on how the neural mechanism works in the extinction of conditioned fear, and evidence showed that the extinction of conditioned disgust differs from the extinction of conditioned fear. Few people have studied the extinction of conditioned disgust
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