Individual Differences in Fear and Autonomic Reactions to Affective Stimulation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Klorman et al. (1975) found that mutilation‐fearful persons reacted with heart rate speeding to mutilation slides and to neutral stimuli. The within‐subject design of that study suggested that these paradoxical reactions to neutral slides may have been due to subjects' anticipation of phobic materials. In the present work, 84 female subjects, categorized by a standardized questionnaire as high or low in fear of mutilation, viewed one of three types of slides: 1) mutilated bodies; 2) persons and objects in incongruous or humorous poses; or 3) standard photographs of persons, objects, and landscapes. Mutilation materials evoked cardiac acceleration and high subjective tension in fearful subjects vs bradycardia and moderate tension in low‐fear subjects. Neutral and incongruous slides prompted similar reactions from both fear groups: heart rate deceleration and low tension. Low‐fear subjects shown mutilation slides tended to exceed the groups receiving nonaversive stimulation in magnitude of cardiac deceleration. Extensive analyses of respiratory activity showed that these differential heart rate reactions were not attributable to breathing. Mutilation stimuli evoked greater skin conductance responses than nonaversive slides, but there were no electrodermal differences as a function of fear relevance. The lawful relationship uncovered in the present research between cardiac reactions and individual differences in fear supports our suggestion that anticipation may have played a role in our earlier work.

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