Authors
Björn Lindström, Armita Golkar, Simon Jangard, Philippe N Tobler, Andreas Olsson
Publication date
2019/3/5
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Volume
116
Issue
10
Pages
4732-4737
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Description
In today’s world, mass-media and online social networks present us with unprecedented exposure to second-hand, vicarious experiences and thereby the chance of forming associations between previously innocuous events (e.g., being in a subway station) and aversive outcomes (e.g., footage or verbal reports from a violent terrorist attack) without direct experience. Such social threat, or fear, learning can have dramatic consequences, as manifested in acute stress symptoms and maladaptive fears. However, most research has so far focused on socially acquired threat responses that are expressed as increased arousal rather than active behavior. In three experiments (n = 120), we examined the effect of indirect experiences on behaviors by establishing a link between social threat learning and instrumental decision making. We contrasted learning from direct experience (i.e., Pavlovian conditioning) (experiment 1 …
Total citations
20192020202120222023202428109114
Scholar articles
B Lindström, A Golkar, S Jangard, PN Tobler, A Olsson - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019