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. 2016 May 5:4:e1942.
doi: 10.7717/peerj.1942. eCollection 2016.

Fear of eyes: triadic relation among social anxiety, trypophobia, and discomfort for eye cluster

Kengo Chaya  1 , Yuting Xue  1 , Yusuke Uto  1 , Qirui Yao  1 , Yuki Yamada  2
Affiliations

Fear of eyes: triadic relation among social anxiety, trypophobia, and discomfort for eye cluster

Kengo Chaya et al. PeerJ. .

Abstract

Imagine you are being gazed at by multiple individuals simultaneously. Is the provoked anxiety a learned social-specific response or related to a pathological disorder known as trypophobia? A previous study revealed that spectral properties of images induced aversive reactions in observers with trypophobia. However, it is not clear whether individual differences such as social anxiety traits are related to the discomfort associated with trypophobic images. To investigate this issue, we conducted two experiments with social anxiety and trypophobia and images of eyes and faces. In Experiment 1, participants completed a social anxiety scale and trypophobia questionnaire before evaluation of the discomfort experienced upon exposure to pictures of eye. The results showed that social anxiety had a significant indirect effect on the discomfort associated with the eye clusters, and that the effect was mediated by trypophobia. Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 using images of human face. The results showed that, as in Experiment 1, a significant mediation effect of trypophobia was obtained, although the relationship between social anxiety and the discomfort rating was stronger than in Experiment 1. Our findings suggest that both social anxiety and trypophobia contribute to the induction of discomfort when one is gazed at by many people.

Keywords: Gaze perception; Social anxiety; Trypophobia.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare there are no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. The examples of stimuli used in Experiment 1.
The letter of each label indicates the Pair-condition (single or paired), and the number in each label indicates the Number-of-eyes-condition (1, 4, 16, or 64). The 256 × 256 pixels of the real eye image were created using the 64 × 64 pixels of one eye in the 1- and 16-eye-condition. The 4-eye-condition used the 128 × 128 pixels of the real eye image. The 64-eye condition used the 512 × 512 pixels of the real eye image.
Figure 2
Figure 2. The DRS for real eye in each condition in Experiment 1.
Figure 3
Figure 3. The mediation model among the LSAS score, the TQ score, and the DRS in Experiments 1 and 2.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Examples of the stimuli used in Experiment 2.
(A) 2-face condition, (B) 8-face condition, and (C) 32-face condition. Each face image was scaled to an elliptical shape, 57 × 75 pixels. Realistic faces were used as stimuli in the actual experiment.
Figure 5
Figure 5. The DRS for faces in each condition in Experiment 2.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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