Previous research on human fear of large carnivores has mainly been based on self-reports in which individual survey items and the objects of fear are measured, so whether a person fears attacks on humans or livestock and pets has not been identified. The objectives of this study were to differentiate between the objects of fear as well as capturing attitudes towards implementation of management actions and the potential for conflict index (PCI). These concern the implementation of a limited number of management actions currently used or discussed in Sweden that are aimed at reducing human fear of brown bears/wolves. 391 persons living in areas with either brown bear (n = 198) or wolf (n = 193) in Sweden responded to a questionnaire. The degree of self-reported fear varied between residents in brown bear areas and residents in wolf areas. The fear of attacks on livestock and pets was stronger than fear of attacks on humans in both brown bear and wolf areas. In brown bear areas, fear was strongest for livestock, while in wolf areas fear was strongest for pets. The fear of attacks on livestock and pets was significantly stronger in wolf areas, while the fear of attacks on humans was strongest in brown bear areas. In both brown bear and wolf areas, there was little acceptance of implementation of management actions that would allow people to carry pepper spray or a gun outdoors. Management actions aimed at setting a population cap for bear/wolf populations, information on how to act when encountering a bear/wolf, and providing information on local presence of bear/wolf had relatively high acceptability. This was especially true for respondents expressing high fear of attacks on humans. 

Human fear is important in wildlife management, but self-reported fear provides only partial information about fear reactions. Thus, eye movements, skin conductance, and changes in heart rate were assessed during picture viewing, visual search, and implicit evaluation tasks. Pictures of bears, wolves, moose, and hares were presented to participants who self-reported as fearful of bears (n = 8), fearful of bears and wolves (n = 15), or not fearful of bears or wolves (n = 14). The feared animal was expected to elicit strong physiological responses, be dwelled upon, and be associated with negative words. Independent of fearfulness, bear pictures elicited the strongest physiological responses, and wolf pictures showed the strongest negative associations. The bear-fearful group showed stronger physiological responses to bears. The bear- and wolf-fearful group showed more difficulty in associating bears with good words. Presence of a feared animal in the search task, resulted in prolonged response time. 

In two visual search experiments, we investigated the impact of distractor sets on fear-relevant stimuli by comparing a search set with spiders, snakes, flowers, and mushrooms to one with spiders, snakes, rabbits, and turtles. We found speeded responses to spider and snake targets when flowers and mushrooms, but not when rabbits and turtles served as distractors. In Experiment 2, we compared spider-sensitive to nonfearful participants. Spider-sensitive participants responded faster than nonfearful participants to spider targets when we used flowers and mushrooms as distractors, but not when we used rabbit and turtle distractors. These results indicate that behavioral responses to the visual search task not only depend on the individual’s relationship to the stimuli included in the search set, but also on the context in which the feared or fear-relevant objects are presented.

This article analyzes people's subjectively experienced fear in areas with presence of brown bear or wolf. Departing from the Human-Environment Interaction Model (Küller, 1991), a hypothetical model of environmental and individual antecedents of fear was tested using structural equation modeling of survey data (n = 391). In the model of fear of brown bear, the main predictor was the appraisal of the species as dangerous/uncontrollable and unpredictable. In the model of fear of wolf, the greater experience with the species and a stronger appraisal of wolf as dangerous, uncontrollable, and unpredictable led to low social trust and this, together with the appraisal of wolf as dangerous/uncontrollable and unpredictable, increased the likelihood of fear. Efforts to reduce human fear of wolves should focus on building trust between the public and authorities, whereas efforts to reduce fear of brown bear should focus on the individual's appraisal of the species.

To investigate whether fear affects the strength with which responses are made, 12 animal-fearful individuals (five snake fearful and seven spider fearful) were instructed to decide as quickly as possible whether an animal target from a deviant category was present in a 3 × 4 item (animal) search array. The animal categories were snakes, spiders, and cats. Response force was measured, in newtons. The results showed that the strength of the response was greater when the feared animal served as the target than when it served as the distractors. This finding was corroborated by evoked heart rate changes to the stimuli. Our findings strengthen the argument that focused attention on a single, feared animal can lead to increases in manual force.

Emotional processing of food-related pictures was studied in four experiments, comparing participants who revealed unhealthy attitudes toward food, dieting and body shape with control groups. All subjects were female and responses to pictures of low and of high calorie foods were compared to responses to other emotional stimuli. The first three experiments measured verbal and autonomic responses and Experiment 4 was a classical conditioning study. In Experiments 2-4, pictures were presented backward masked in order to observe automatic, non-conscious responses. The results showed that, in general, food pictures were processed in the same way as other emotional material, both verbally and psychophysiologically. Although there were some results indicating a difference between groups, the general pattern was that participants selected for being more worried about food and dieting did not show higher reactivity to food cues.

The research aimed at examining attentional selectivity in a visual search paradigm using pictures of animals that have provided a recurrent threat in an evolutionary perspective (i.e., snakes and spiders) and pictures of animals that have supposedly posed no such threat (i.e., cats and fish). Experiment 1 showed no advantage of fear-relevant stimuli over non-fear-relevant animal stimuli. However, an attentional capture seemed to emerge as a delay in the disengagement of attention, specifically when there was a massive presentation of fear-relevant stimuli in the array. The results from Experiment 2, where participants were selected based specifically on their fear of either snakes or spiders (but not both), showed a preferential processing of the congruent feared stimulus, when compared with non fearful participants, which strengthens the notion that fear significance may be an important factor drawing attention to a particular spatial location.

The occurrence and timing of emotion-antecedent appraisal checks are difficult to assess. We report an attempt to estimate the time window of the intrinsic pleasantness check using a dual-task probe paradigm. In three experiments, participants viewed negative and positive pictures. Their other task was speeded responding on a probe superimposed on the pictures with different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). Longer probe-reaction times were observed for negative than positive pictures. This effect appeared at SOA 300 or 350 ms, suggesting that the intrinsic pleasantness appraisal check yields a differential behavioral outcome around 300 ms after stimulus onset, and seems to continue unless attention to picture content is inhibited. This paradigm might be successfully used for the mental chronography of appraisal processes.

The dynamics of resource allocation to pictures of spiders and other animals in spider-fearful participants was investigated. The task of the participants was to respond rapidly and accurately to various probe stimuli superimposed on pictures of different animals. These were arguably fear relevant (spiders, snakes, and wolves) and fear irrelevant (beetles, turtles, and rabbits). The probes were shown with different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) from picture onset to address the dynamics of resource allocation. A larger allocation of resources to spider pictures than to pictures of all other animals, with no difference between the latter regarding resource allocation was found. For the task that demanded more resources the fearrelated physiological responses decreased, suggesting that controlled processing modulates fear responses.