Update 1 on the Fear-Disgust-Hate project

Background “Fear”

Fear is one of the most is evolutionary conserved sensory input-responses across species (together with aggression, and disgust), which supports the underlying assumption that fear bypasses critical thinking.

Fear induces more effects than the fight/flight-response. There are effects of fear on nearly all aspects of cognition, ranging from attention to memory to judgment and decision-making (ref 1).

Most stimuli of which humans are afraid are probably learned socially (ref 2).

The stimuli does not have to be direct or physically present. From ref 1:

“Finally, it is worth emphasizing that humans stand out from other animals in having fear and anxiety triggered not by occurrent stimuli, but merely by thinking about such stimuli. The bulk of psychopathology arises from worrying about what could happen and what might be, often to the point of distorting what actually is. This aspect of fear induction in humans probably also contributes to the impression we have that fear depends very much on conscious experience.”

So, it seems likely that reading something that contains a fear stimulus, activates aspects of the fear-response. Looks like the search for some kind of a written “OFF”-switch for reading-induced fear is still viable.