Trypophobia

Abstract: In the past 10 years, thousands of people have claimed to be affected by trypophobia, which is the fear of objects with small holes. Recent research suggests that people do not fear the holes; rather, images of clustered holes, which share basic visual characteristics with venomous organisms, lead to nonconscious fear. In the present study, both self-reported measures and the Preschool Single Category Implicit Association Test were adapted for use with preschoolers to investigate whether discomfort related to trypophobic stimuli was grounded in their visual features or based on a nonconsciously associated fear of venomous animals. The results indicated that trypophobic stimuli were associated with discomfort in children. This discomfort seemed to be related to the typical visual characteristics and pattern properties of trypophobic stimuli rather than to nonconscious associations with venomous animals. The association between trypophobic stimuli and venomous animals vanished when the typical visual characteristics of trypophobic features were removed from colored photos of venomous animals. Thus, the discomfort felt toward trypophobic images might be an instinctive response to their visual characteristics rather than the result of a learned but nonconscious association with venomous animals. Therefore, it is questionable whether it is justified to legitimize trypophobia.

Abstract: Background Trypophobia is characterised by an aversion to or even revulsion for patterns of holes or visual stimuli featuring such patterns. Past research has shown that trypophobic stimuli trigger emotional and physiological reactions, but relatively little is known about the antecedents, prodromes, or simply covariates of trypophobia. Aim The goals of this study were (a) to draw the contours of the nomological network of trypophobia by assessing the associations of symptoms of trypophobia with several constructs that were deemed relevant from past research on anxiety disorders and specific phobias, (b) to compare such associations with those found for symptoms of spider phobia and blood and injection phobia (alternative dependent variables), and (c) to investigate the main effect of gender on symptoms of trypophobia and replicate the association of gender with symptoms of spider phobia and blood and injection phobia (higher scores for women). Methods Participants (N = 1,134, 53% men) in this cross-sectional study completed an online questionnaire assessing the constructs of interest. Results Most assessed constructs typically associated with anxiety disorders (neuroticism, conscientiousness, anxiety sensitivity, trait anxiety, disgust sensitivity, and disgust propensity) were also associated with trypophobia in the predicted direction. All of these constructs were also associated with spider phobia and blood and injection phobia. Behavioral inhibition was negatively associated with trypophobia and spider phobia-contrary to what was expected, but positively with blood and injection phobia. We found no gender difference in trypophobia, whereas women scored higher on spider phobia and blood and injection phobia. Discussion Although some differences were observed, the nomological network of trypophobia was largely similar to that of spider phobia and blood and injection phobia. Further studies are needed to clarify similarities and dissimilarities between trypophobia and specific phobia.

Abstract: Trypophobia is induced by viewing multiple clustered objects. To date, several studies have investigated why certain people experience discomfort when looking at clustered patterns. Recently, "involuntary protection against dermatosis" (IPAD) hypothesis was proposed to explain the causes of trypophobia. The IPAD hypothesis suggests that involuntary aversive responses to skin diseases cause discomfort in response to image clusters. However, this idea has not been fully investigated empirically. Therefore, the present study used a modified version of the priming procedure and tested whether the activation of the concept of skin-related diseases affected the evaluation of trypophobic images. In Experiment 1, participants engaged in a lexical decision task in which words related to skin problems, negative events, or neutral events were presented. Then, they evaluated the discomfort of trypophobic, negative, and neutral images. The results indicated that participants evaluated trypophobic images as more discomforting after they were exposed to skin-problem-related words, whereas the exposure to words related to skin-problems did not enhance the discomfort of negative images. These findings demonstrate that the association with skin-related problems increases the discomfort of trypophobic images. In Experiment 2, we further tested the reproducibility of the priming effect observed in Experiment 1 and investigated the effect of priming with words related to COVID-19 in the context of a spreading infection. Contrary to predictions, no priming effect was produced by either skin-related words or COVID-19-related words. Future studies should further explore the causal relationship of the association between skin disease and trypophobia.