Abstract
Using a brain-imaging technique, Breiter et al. (1996) and Morris et al. (1996) showed that the amygdala, which is known to respond to threatening stimuli, is activated when participants view fearful facial expressions. These results imply that fear is transferable between individuals. The purpose of this study was to provide behavioral evidence for ‘fear contagion’ using a probe detection task to measure attention bias following exposure to either fear-relevant or fear-neutral primes. As expected, the results revealed a fear-specific response bias in which participants selectively directed their attention towards a fearful facial-expression after being primed with a fear-face. Conversely, selective attention was not observed with neutral-face, sad-face, or snake primes. Interestingly, participants tended to selectively avoid a picture of a snake following a fear-face prime. Implications of these findings and future directions are discussed.
