An attempt to develop a laboratory model of superstitious learning of threat
Superstitions are beliefs that are not supported by empirical evidence, or beliefs that persist in the face of contradictory empirical evidence (Zebb & Moore, 2003). Both cultural and personal superstitions are pervasive in the general population (Vyse, 1997) and appear to influence not only the clinically ill, but healthy individuals as well as successful sportspeople, businesspeople, and politicians. The history of superstition research is traced from the Skinner's seminal (1948) explanation of superstitious learning as the result of accidental pairings of events, or adventitious conditioning. Contemporary human superstitious learning research (e.g. Matute, 1994, 1995) has demonstrated that non-contingent delivery of reinforcers can lead to illusion of control if the person is actively making instrumental responses to gain those reinforcers. Superstitious beliefs appear to play a role in clinical anxiety disorders such as OCD, social phobia, and PD. Specifically, avoidance of threatening situations and engaging in in-situation safety behaviours (e.g. Salkovskis, D. M. Clark & Gelder, 1996), prevent non-occurrence of the feared outcome from disconfirming the threat belief and eventual fear extinction. Quite the opposite, instrumental attempts to prevent imminent catastrophe lead non-occurrence of the feared outcome to be perceived as confirmation that the threat is real. A human avoidance learning paradigm (P. Lovibond, 2006; P. Lovibond et al., 2008) was adapted for a laboratory investigation of superstitious learning using a threat-relevant stimulus (mild electric shock). A series of five experiments using undergraduate participants demonstrated that participants‟ expectations of task structure modulated their tendency to develop maintained stereotyped responding. Approximately half the participants maintained a chosen instrumental response to a target cue and maintained higher threat beliefs towards that cue even though it had never been paired with shock. Participants who did not maintain an instrumental response had lower threat estimates for the target cue. While non-shocked presentations of the target cue should lead to fear reduction and eventual extinction, response maintenance protects from extinction fear to a threat cue. Reasons for the lower-than-expected rates of response maintenance were discussed, and future experiments were suggested in order to address this perceived shortcoming.
Avoidance, Superstition, Illusion of Control, Human, Learning, Pavlovian, Instrumental, Fear
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