Language conditioning, emotional instructions, and cognitions in conditioned responses to fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli. This study compared the effects of experimentally induced self-verbalizations (SV) on conditioned responses to fear-relevant (snakes) and fear-irrelevant (rabbits) stimuli. To extend the analysis of "preparedness theory" beyond its former reliance on physiological measures of fear, subjective and behavioral measures were also included. Using aversive tones (UCS) and slides of snakes or rabbits (CS), fear was classically conditioned in 44 volunteers. In 20 subsequent language conditioning trials without aversive tones, the same slides were paired with verbalizations referring either to positive features of the animals (stimulus-referent SV) or to approach behavior (response-referent SV). Skin conductance responses to fear-relevant stimuli were more readily acquired, of higher magnitude, and more resistant to extinction. Extinction was differentially affected by the two types of SV. Snakes were consistently evaluated more negatively than rabbits and approached less in a behavior test.

Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regard to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve. In this framework, psychological traits and mechanisms are either functional products of natural and sexual selection or non-adaptive by-products The… When an organism's traits are suited for its old environment, a change in surroundings can result in a mismatch. Our minds, evolved for Pleistocene environments, may possess traits incongruent with the modern world. For instance, it is noteworthy that more than 20,000 people in the US die from gun violence each year. However, spiders and snakes are responsible for very few fatalities. Even so, individuals acquire a fear of spiders and snakes as easily as they do a pointed gun, and more easily than an unpointed gun, rabbits, or flowers. One possible reason is that spiders and snakes posed a danger to early humans during the Pleistocene, unlike guns, rabbits, and flowers. There is a mismatch between our evolved fear responses and the modern world. This mismatch also shows up in the phenomenon of the supernormal stimulus, a stimulus that elicits a response more strongly than the stimulus for which the response evolved. The term was coined by Niko Tinbergen to refer to non-human animal behavior, but psychologist Deirdre Barrett said that supernormal stimulation governs human behavior as powerfully as that of other animals. She explained junk food as an exaggerated stimulus for cravings for salt, sugar, and fat, and she says that television exaggerates social cues of laughter, smiling faces, and attention-grabbing action. Magazine centerfolds and double cheeseburgers pull instincts intended for an environment of evolutionary adaptedness where breast development was a sign of health, youth, and fertility in a prospective mate, and fat was a rare and vital nutrient. The psychologist Mark van Vugt recently argued that modern organizational leadership is a mismatch. His argument is that humans are not adapted to work in large, anonymous bureaucratic structures with formal hierarchies. The human mind still responds to personalized, charismatic leadership primarily in informal, egalitarian settings. Hence, the dissatisfaction and alienation that many employees experience. Salaries, bonuses, and other privileges exploit instincts for relative status, which attract men in particular to senior executive positions. Mo…

This manipulation potentiated potentiated responses to fear-relevant stimuli significantly more than responses to fear-irrelevant stimuli. Thus, instruction had a symmetrical effect on acquisition and extinction to fear-irrelevant stimuli, whereas it facilitated acquisition but was ineffective in reducing responding to the other class of stimuli. These results are related to a preparedness theory, and their relevance for an understanding of phobias is discussed. Published in Journal of experimental psychology. Human learning and memory (1977)