Priming a natural or human-made environment directs attention to context-congruent threatening stimuli

Abstract

Research suggests that attention is attracted to evolutionary threats (e.g., snakes) due to an evolved “fear-module” that automatically detects biological threats to survival. However, recent evidence indicates that non-evolutionary threats (e.g., guns) capture and hold attention as well, suggesting a more general “threat-relevance” mechanism that directs attentional resources toward any potential danger in the environment. The current research measured how selective attentional resources were influenced both by the type of threat (e.g., snake vs. gun) and by the context in which the threat was encountered. Participants were primed with either natural or human-made environments to assess how these contexts influence attention to evolutionary and non-evolutionary threats, as measured by a spatial-cueing task. The results indicate that whether biological or non-biological threats receive greater attentional processing is determined by the context in which they are encountered.

Keywords:

• Evolutionary psychology
• Attention
• Threat

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National Institute of Health grant R01 MH070833-02 awarded to NA.

Notes

¹We conducted a pre-test of the context images to ensure they were not differentially threatening. To do so, 20 participants were asked to rate “how threatening is the scene depicted in this image” for each context on a 1–7 scale (high numbers indicating greater threat ratings). The results found that nature contexts (M=1.85, SD=1.31) and human-made contexts (M=2.20, SD=1.32) did not differ, t(19) = 1.20, p=.25.

²IAPS images: evolutionary: 1050, 1080, 1090, 1200, 1220, 1240; non-evolutionary: 6260, 6300, 6350, 6550, 6610, 6800.

³The analytic strategy reported in the main text was recommended by an anonymous reviewer. Given that numerous other researchers have explored separate effects on valid and invalid trials, we also conducted analyses with this factor included in the model. The associated 2 (Prime Type: nature, urban)×2 (Threat Type: evolutionary, non-evolutionary)×2 (Trial Type: valid, invalid) repeated-measures ANOVA revealed a three-way interaction, F(1, 61) = 6.05, p=.02. We next conducted separate 2 (Context Prime)×2 (Threat Type) ANOVAs for RTs on valid and invalid trials. For valid trials, the 2×2 ANOVA revealed no significant effects of Prime Type, F(1, 61) = 1.92, p=.17, or Threat Type, F(1, 61) < 1, p=.47, and no interaction between these two factors, F(1, 61) < 1, p=.64. However, for invalid trials, the 2×2 ANOVA produced a significant interaction, F(1, 61) = 12.33, p<.01. Follow-up paired-sample t-tests found that participants in the natural prime were slower to disengage from evolutionary threats (M=411, SD=79) than from non-evolutionary threats (M=402, SD=68), t(61) = 2.43, p<.05. However, following urban primes, participants were slower to disengage from non-evolutionary (M=415, SD=79) than evolutionary threats (M=404, SD=66), t(61) = − 2.01, p<.05. Granting caution in interpreting these results (e.g., Mogg et al., 2008) these findings suggest that the effects of stimuli relevance were limited to attentional disengagement, which is consistent with other work (e.g., Ackerman et al., 2009; Fox et al., 2007; Maner et al., 2003).