Behavioral and Magnetoencephalographic Correlates of Fear Generalization are Associated with Responses to Later Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy in Spider Phobia

Generalization of beneficial exposure effects to untreated stimuli from another fear category

Previous research has shown that fear associated with one stimulus often spreads to other stimuli with similar perceptual features as well as across different stimulus categories. Exposure is considered as the most effective intervention to attenuate exaggerated fear. The extent to which exposure treatment effects can generalize to fears not targeted during treatment remains elusive. Previous studies on possible generalization of beneficial effects of exposure used stimuli sharing the same stimulus category and/or stimuli having high perceptual similarity. The current study examined whether exposure treatment generalization can be achieved for untreated stimuli which do not share any perceptual resemblance and belong to a different fear category. An analogue sample of fifty participants with fear of spiders (animal-related fears) and heights (natural environment-related fears) was tested. Participants have been randomly assigned to either an exposure treatment (n = 24) or a control condition (n = 26). Exposure treatment was designed to only target participants' fear of spiders, leaving their fear of heights untreated. Results demonstrated that the effects of exposure treatment generalized to fear of heights, as indicated by a reduction in behavioral avoidance, as well as self-reported acrophobia symptoms. The present study confutes the assumption that generalization of exposure effects to untreated fears is based on perceptual similarity. Clearly, further research is required to determine the decisive factors, in order to expand the generalization effect permanently to any given type of fear.

Is the shopping list a guarantee for rational consumer behaviour?

Consumers may undertake various steps in order to increase the rationality of their choices. One of the options involves drawing up a shopping list. The study presents an innovative method of analysing consumer behaviour during shopping. Modern technologies were used to set up a virtual environment within which a store was created. A combination of methods was employed to assess the subjective opinions expressed during in-depth interviews. Another step focused on analysing the internal stimuli of the research subjects with the use of neuroscientific tools to evaluate the behaviour of the research participants. The aim of the study was to verify the impact of a shopping list on consumer rationality. The research results presented constitute a part of a broader research project, within the scope of which research method triangulations enabled an in-depth analysis of conscious and unconscious aspects of the subjects’ behaviour (Borawski et al. 2021).