Aj. Tomarken et al., FEAR-RELEVANT ILLUSORY CORRELATIONS - WHAT TYPES OF ASSOCIATIONS PROMOTE JUDGMENTAL BIAS, Journal of abnormal psychology, 104(2), 1995, pp. 312-326
A. J. Tomarken, S. Mineka, and M. Cook (1989) found that high-fear ind
ividuals markedly overestimated the covariation between fear-relevant
stimuli and aversive outcomes. The authors assessed what features of s
timulus-outcome associations promote illusory correlations. In Experim
ent 1, participants with high snake fear exhibited significant covaria
tion bias for slides of snakes and shocks, but not for slides of damag
ed electric outlets (DEOs) and shocks. In Experiment 2, individuals wi
th high and low snake fear rated DEOs and shocks as belonging together
better than snakes and shocks. However, the shapes of high-fear indiv
iduals' affective response profiles to snakes and shocks were more sim
ilar than their profile shapes involving other pairings. In addition,
their affective responses to snakes and snake-shock profile similarity
predicted snake-shock belongingness ratings. These results suggest th
e importance of emotional responses and emotional profile similarity i
n mediating illusory correlations involving fear-relevant stimuli.