ArticleBehavior research methods2021
Cockroaches are scarier than snakes and spiders: Validation of an affective standardized set of animal images (ASSAI).
Article in Behavior research methods, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Beyond traditional stimuli: Validating AI-generated images for eliciting negative emotions in affect research.PloS one · 2026Article
- ThreatSim: A novel stimuli database of threatening and nonthreatening image pairs rated for similarity.Behavior research methods · 2025Article
- Validation of the Edited Tromsø Infant Faces Database (E-TIF): A study on differences in the processing of children's emotional expressions.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Validation of the open biological negative image set for a Portuguese population: Comparing Japanese and Portuguese samples and an exploration of low-order visual properties of the stimuli.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Article
- Emotions triggered by live arthropods shed light on spider phobia.Scientific reports · 2021Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
Research on emotional processes has been closely related to the use of emotional stimuli, promoting the development of different standardized sets of images. However, some kinds of images that would be relevant in clinical psychology research are not available, especially for small animal phobias. The aim of the present study is to validate a set of animal images that includes images of cockroaches, which are not present in the current sets of images. Two hundred and forty images depicting five types of animals (cockroaches, spiders, snakes, cats, and butterflies) were collected from online public domains. Four hundred and twenty-four participants (72.9% women) took part in the study rating the images in two affective dimensions (i.e., valence and arousal). Cockroach pictures were rated as significantly more unpleasant than pictures of spiders, snakes, butterflies, and cats. Moreover, results revealed that women rated cockroach, spider, and snake pictures as more negative than men did. Also, women in comparison with men rated cockroach images as more arousing. The results highlight the importance of using images of cockroaches, due to their high negative valence, which even exceeds that of snakes and spiders, the unpleasant animals typically used in phobic research. This set of images can be useful in research on small-animal phobias.
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