Abstract
In previous chapters, I have argued that recent theories have presupposed the notion that people feel innately threatened by particular stimuli (e.g., snakes and spiders). However, people learn either directly or indirectly that particular stimuli are threatening, so it is necessary to investigate whether responses (fear responses) to particular threatening stimuli are “innate” using babies and animals with no experience of these stimuli. This chapter provides an overview of studies using babies (infants) and monkeys as subjects. Neither babies nor monkeys show explicit fear responses toward snakes (or spiders, etc.). However, they closely watch videos of snakes when sounds expressing threats are heard. Thus, it appears that there do exist latent associations. In addition, human infants and monkeys quickly find the pictures of snake among those of flowers than vice versa. Such findings support the claim of snake detection theory (SDT) that primates evolved a visual system for efficiently detecting snakes.
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Kawai, N. (2019). Ontogeny and Phylogeny of Snake Fear. In: The Fear of Snakes. The Science of the Mind. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7530-9_4
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