THE ROLE OF EVALUATIVE LEARNING AND DISGUST SENSITIVITY IN THE ETIOLOGY AND TREATMENT OF SPIDER PHOBIA

The role of disgust and contamination sensitivity in the development a nd treatment of spider phobia was examined. It was predicted that spid er phobics high in disgust and contamination sensitivity have been mor e susceptible to evaluative conditioning processes and, as a result, l ess often report traumatic conditioning events and benefit less from e xposure treatment than phobics low in disgust sensitivity (Baeyens, Ee len, Crombez, & van den Bergh, 1992). As a group, spider phobics (N = 46) were characterized by higher disgust sensitivity than nonphobic co ntrol subjects (N = 28). However, phobics high in disgust sensitivity reported, if anything, more conditioning events than low digust sensit ivity phobics. Treatment effects of exposure were evident in both self -report measures and the behavioral modality. These effects were compa rable for high and low disgust sensitivity phobics. Remarkably, high a nd low disgust sensitivity phobics did not differ with regard to the p erceived dirtiness of spiders. Even when the perceived dirtiness of sp iders was used as a classifying variable, no differences in acquisitio n history or treatment outcome emerged between high and low groups. Th us, the findings lend no support to the views that traumatic condition ing events are rare and that exposure treatment is less successful in phobics who presumably have an evaluative learning background. The met hodological limitations of the present study are discussed.