FEAR-RELEVANT ILLUSORY CORRELATIONS - WHAT TYPES OF ASSOCIATIONS PROMOTE JUDGMENTAL BIAS

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.