Biological preparedness and resistance to extinction of skin conductance responses conditioned to fear relevant animal pictures: A systematic review

Publication date: Available online 28 October 2018Source: Neuroscience & Biobehavioral ReviewsAuthor(s): Fredrik Åhs, Jörgen Rosén, Granit Kastrati, Mats Fredrikson, Thomas Agren, Johan N. LundströmAbstractPreparedness theory is one of the most influential ideas in explaining the origin of specific phobias. The theory proposes that fear conditioning is selective to animals that have posed a threat to survival throughout human evolution, and that acquired fear memories to such threats are resistant to extinction. We reviewed fear conditioning studies testing whether autonomic responses conditioned to pictures of snakes and spiders show greater resistance to extinction than neutral cues. We identified 32 fear conditioning experiments published in 23 studies including 1887 participants. Increased resistance to extinction of conditioned responses to snake and spider pictures was found in 10 (31%) of the experiments, whereas 22 (69%) experiments did not support the hypothesis. Thus, the body of evidence suggests that preparedness theory does not explain the origin of specific phobias.
Source: Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research