Experimental Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Giessen, Germany.
Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany.
Cogn Emot. 2022 Sep;36(6):1132-1148. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2022.2087600. Epub 2022 Jun 24.
Responding adequately to the behaviour of human and non-human animals in our environment has been crucial for our survival. This is also reflected in our exceptional capacity to detect and interpret biological motion signals. However, even though our emotions have specifically emerged as automatic adaptive responses to such vital stimuli, few studies investigated the influence of biological motion on emotional evaluations. Here, we test how the motion of animals affects emotional judgements by contrasting static animal images and videos. We investigated this question (1) in non-fearful observers across many different animals, and (2) in observers afraid of particular animals across four types of animals, including the feared ones. In line with previous studies, we find an idiosyncratic pattern of evoked emotions across different types of animals. These emotions can be explained to different extents by regression models based on relevant predictor variables (e.g. familiarity, dangerousness). Additionally, our findings show a boosting effect of motion on emotional evaluations across all animals, with an additional increase in (negative) emotions for moving feared animals (except snakes). We discuss implications of our results for experimental and clinical research and applications, highlighting the importance of experiments with dynamic and ecologically valid stimuli.
对我们环境中的人类和非人类动物的行为做出适当反应对我们的生存至关重要。这也反映在我们非凡的能力上，能够检测和解释生物运动信号。然而，尽管我们的情绪是专门作为对这些重要刺激的自动适应反应而出现的，但很少有研究调查生物运动对情绪评估的影响。在这里，我们通过对比静态动物图像和视频来测试动物的运动如何影响情绪判断。我们在许多不同的动物中（1）在不害怕的观察者中，以及（2）在对特定动物感到害怕的观察者中（包括害怕的动物），研究了这个问题。与先前的研究一致，我们发现不同类型的动物会引起独特的情绪反应模式。这些情绪可以通过基于相关预测变量（例如熟悉度、危险性）的回归模型在不同程度上得到解释。此外，我们的研究结果还表明，运动对所有动物的情绪评估都有增强作用，对于移动的害怕的动物（除了蛇），情绪（负面情绪）会进一步增加。我们讨论了我们的结果对实验和临床研究和应用的影响，强调了使用动态和生态有效的刺激进行实验的重要性。
