The hole story: an event-related potential study with trypophobic stimuli

Trypophobia has been defined as the fear and/or aversion of irregular patterns or clusters of small holes. This event-related potential study compared 20 individuals with high trypophobia proneness (TP_high: 16 women, 4 men) and 20 individuals with low TP (16 women, 4 men). All participants viewed images from four different categories: clusters of holes, generally fear-inducing, generally disgust-inducing and neutral pictures. Relative to the TP_low group, the TP_high group showed a larger parietal late positive potential (LPP; 350-900 ms) to clusters of holes. The two groups did not differ in their LPP amplitudes to the other image categories. The increased LPP displayed by TP prone individuals reflects facilitated attention to these stimuli of motivational relevance. Clusters of holes primarily elicited disgust in the TP_high group, whereas these stimuli were affectively neutral for the TP_low group.