Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, 3-4-1 Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 169-8555, Japan.
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2021 May 14;11(1):10362. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-89917-7.
Trypophobia is induced by viewing multiple clustered objects. To date, several studies have investigated why certain people experience discomfort when looking at clustered patterns. Recently, "involuntary protection against dermatosis" (IPAD) hypothesis was proposed to explain the causes of trypophobia. The IPAD hypothesis suggests that involuntary aversive responses to skin diseases cause discomfort in response to image clusters. However, this idea has not been fully investigated empirically. Therefore, the present study used a modified version of the priming procedure and tested whether the activation of the concept of skin-related diseases affected the evaluation of trypophobic images. In Experiment 1, participants engaged in a lexical decision task in which words related to skin problems, negative events, or neutral events were presented. Then, they evaluated the discomfort of trypophobic, negative, and neutral images. The results indicated that participants evaluated trypophobic images as more discomforting after they were exposed to skin-problem-related words, whereas the exposure to words related to skin-problems did not enhance the discomfort of negative images. These findings demonstrate that the association with skin-related problems increases the discomfort of trypophobic images. In Experiment 2, we further tested the reproducibility of the priming effect observed in Experiment 1 and investigated the effect of priming with words related to COVID-19 in the context of a spreading infection. Contrary to predictions, no priming effect was produced by either skin-related words or COVID-19-related words. Future studies should further explore the causal relationship of the association between skin disease and trypophobia.
密集恐惧症是由观看多个聚集物体引起的。迄今为止，已有多项研究调查了为什么某些人在看到聚集的图案时会感到不适。最近，提出了“对皮肤病的无意识保护”（IPAD）假说来解释密集恐惧症的原因。该假说认为，对皮肤病的无意识厌恶反应会导致对图像集群的不适。然而，这一观点尚未得到充分的实证研究。因此，本研究使用了一种改良的启动程序，测试了皮肤相关疾病概念的激活是否会影响对密集恐惧症图像的评价。在实验 1 中，参与者参与了一项词汇判断任务，其中呈现了与皮肤问题、负面事件或中性事件相关的单词。然后，他们评价了密集恐惧症、负面和中性图像的不适程度。结果表明，参与者在接触到与皮肤问题相关的单词后，会对密集恐惧症图像评价为更不适，而接触到与皮肤问题相关的单词并不会增加负面图像的不适程度。这些发现表明，与皮肤相关的问题的关联增加了密集恐惧症图像的不适程度。在实验 2 中，我们进一步测试了实验 1 中观察到的启动效应的重现性，并研究了在传播感染的背景下用与 COVID-19 相关的单词进行启动的效果。与预测相反，与皮肤相关的单词或 COVID-19 相关的单词都没有产生启动效应。未来的研究应该进一步探索皮肤疾病和密集恐惧症之间关联的因果关系。
