COVARIATION BIAS FOR BLOOD-INJURY STIMULI AND AVERSIVE OUTCOMES

Three illusory correlation experiments were conducted to determine whe ther a fear-relevant covariation bias (Tomarken, Mineka & Cook, 1989, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 98, 381-394) could be demonstrated usi ng different types of fear-relevant stimuli from the blood-injury phob ia category. In each experiment, women high and low on blood-injury fe ar were presented with fear-relevant slides depicting blood or injury, as well as slides from two neutral categories. A shock (aversive outc ome), or a tone or no outcome (neutral outcomes) followed each of the 72 slides. Although the relationship between slide types and outcomes was random, subjects in all three experiments overestimated the co-occ urrence of shock and blood-injury slides relative to all other slide-o utcome combinations. However, there was no significant effect of blood -injury fear on this bias, indicating that, regardless of their blood- injury fear level, humans show an associative bias to selectively asso ciate blood-injury stimuli with aversive outcomes. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd