Department of Psychology.
Emotion. 2022 Oct;22(7):1517-1528. doi: 10.1037/emo0000925. Epub 2021 Oct 28.
Recent work has demonstrated that social support figures seem to be particularly robust inhibitors of the Pavlovian fear response. Specifically, social support figures appear to act as stimuli that have played an important role in mammalian survival and are thus less easily associated with threat and more able to inhibit the fear response. Given some of the shared behavioral and neural consequences of both social support and physical warmth, as well as the importance of physical warmth for mammalian survival, we conducted a series of examinations designed to examine whether physical warmth is also a prepared safety stimulus. In two studies conducted in human adults, we examined whether a physically warm stimulus was less readily associated with threat (compared to soft or neutral stimuli; Study 1) and was able to inhibit the fear response elicited by other threatening cues (compared to neutral stimuli; Study 2). Results showed that physical warmth resisted association with threat (Study 1) and not only inhibited the fear response but also led to lasting inhibition even after the warm stimulus was removed (Study 2). Together, these studies indicate that physical warmth, like social support, meets the requirements of being a prepared safety stimulus, and they pave the way for future work to clarify the properties that enable cues in this category to naturally inhibit fear responding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
最近的研究表明，社会支持因素似乎是抑制条件性恐惧反应的特别强大的抑制剂。具体来说，社会支持因素似乎是一种刺激，在哺乳动物的生存中发挥了重要作用，因此不太容易与威胁联系在一起，而更能抑制恐惧反应。鉴于社会支持和身体温暖具有一些共同的行为和神经后果，以及身体温暖对哺乳动物生存的重要性，我们进行了一系列的研究，旨在探讨身体温暖是否也是一种预备性安全刺激。在两项针对成年人类的研究中，我们研究了身体温暖的刺激是否不易与威胁相关联（与柔软或中性刺激相比；研究 1），以及是否能够抑制其他威胁线索引起的恐惧反应（与中性刺激相比；研究 2）。结果表明，身体温暖抵抗与威胁的关联（研究 1），不仅抑制了恐惧反应，而且即使在温暖刺激移除后，也能导致持久的抑制（研究 2）。这些研究表明，身体温暖与社会支持一样，符合预备性安全刺激的要求，并为未来的工作铺平了道路，以阐明使这一类线索能够自然抑制恐惧反应的特性。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2022 APA，保留所有权利）。
