Zhu Siqi, Sasaki Kyoshiro, Jiang Yue, Qian Kun, Yamada Yuki
Graduate School of Human-Environment Studies, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan.
Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.
PeerJ. 2020 Mar 18;8:e8837. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8837. eCollection 2020.
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.
密集恐惧症是由密集的孔洞或圆形物体（如莲蓬）引发的一种强烈的厌恶情绪。自20世纪20年代以来，它越来越受到关注并得到研究，主要集中在西方和日本。鉴于此，密集恐惧症可能是一种现代情绪，因此城市化可能在密集恐惧症的形成中起关键作用。为解决这一问题，我们比较了中国城市居民和非城市居民的密集恐惧症程度。在一项实验中，我们询问参与者对密集恐惧症图像的不适程度。结果表明，两组都存在密集恐惧症，尽管城市居民的效应量比非城市居民更大。此外，实验后的访谈和事后分析表明，非城市地区的老年人密集恐惧症程度较低。我们的研究结果表明，密集恐惧症与城市化以及与年龄相关的特征有关。
