Abstract
Trypophobia is a strong emotion of disgust evoked by clusters of holes or round objects (e.g., lotus seed pod). It has become increasingly popular and been studied since 2010s, mainly in the West and Japan. Considering this, trypophobia might be a modern emotion, and hence urbanization possibly plays key roles in trypophobia. To address this issue, we compared the degree of trypophobia between urban and less urban people in China. In an experiment, we asked participants about their degree of discomfort from trypophobic images. The results showed that trypophobia occurred in both groups, although the effect size was larger in urban than less urban people. Moreover, post-experimental interviews and post-hoc analyses revealed that older people in less urban area did not experience as much trypophobia. Our findings suggest that trypophobia links to urbanization and age-related properties.
Highlights
Clusters of holes or round objects can induce strong feelings of disgust
Another study revealed that low- and mid-spatial frequency information contributed to trypophobia (Sasaki et al, 2017)
The simple main effect of the participant group was significant for the trypophobic image (F(1, 66) = 19.29, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.23) while it was not significant in the neutral image (F(1, 66) = 0.24, p = 0.63, η2p = 0.004)2
Summary
Clusters of holes or round objects can induce strong feelings of disgust This phenomenon is called trypophobia (Abbasi, 2011; Cole & Wilkins, 2013). It increasingly garnered public attention via the Internet and has been investigated since the 2010s (Abbasi, 2011; Cole & Wilkins, 2013) It seems to be a relatively new emotional phenomenon. Another study revealed that low- and mid-spatial frequency information contributed to trypophobia (Sasaki et al, 2017). Based on these findings, trypophobic objects may be processed rapidly and unconsciously; there is
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