Neuropsychology of phobic reaction to snakes

Neuropsychology of phobic reaction to snakes Mgr. Jakub Polák, Ph.D. Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Petr Kulišťák, Ph.D. The snake is a psychologically very strong stimulus that triggers intense fear in a large part of the population and at the same time causes one of the most common specific phobias. According to an evolutionary hypothesis, universal snake fear is a result of selection pressures, because during evolution of the mankind, venomous snakes presented a deadly threat. Previous psychological research has therefore used the snake as a prototypical trigger of fear. However, snakes as a group are very variable in terms of morphology, colour, toxicity, and behaviour. In this dissertation, I have adopted several tools to verify the hypothesis that some species of snakes may elicit disgust rather than fear. The whole work is divided into four consecutive studies: 1) psychodiagnostics of fear of snakes and disgust using standard scales, 2) rating of snake images according to fear and disgust, 3) measurement of physiological response and 4) measurement of neural activation using fMRI. A different sample of subjects was studied in each of the four parts, however, men and women aged 18 or older with varying levels of fear of snakes and disgust propensity were included. They were mostly healthy subjects, only the..