Snakes Represent Emotionally Salient Stimuli That May Evoke Both Fear and Disgust.

ABSTRACT: Humans perceive snakes as threatening stimuli, resulting in fast emotional and behavioral responses. However, snake species differ in their true level of danger and are highly variable in appearance despite the uniform legless form. Different snakes may evoke fear or disgust in humans, or even both emotions simultaneously. We designed three-step-selection experiments to identify prototypical snake species evoking exclusively fear or disgust. First, two independent groups of respondents evaluated 45 images covering most of the natural variability of snakes and rated responses to either perceived fear (n = 175) or disgust (n = 167). Snakes rated as the most fear-evoking were from the family Viperidae (Crotalinae, Viperinae, and Azemiopinae), while the ones

SUBMITTER: Radlova S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6521895 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature