Visual attention is not attuned to non-human animal targets' pathogenicity: an evolutionary mismatch perspective
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Tarih
2025
Yazarlar
Dergi Başlığı
Dergi ISSN
Cilt Başlığı
Yayıncı
Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd
Erişim Hakkı
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Özet
A considerable amount of research has revealed that there exists an evolutionary mismatch between ancestral environments and conditions following the rise of agriculture regarding the contact between humans and animal reservoirs of infectious diseases. Based on this evolutionary mismatch framework, we examined whether visual attention exhibits adaptive attunement toward animal targets' pathogenicity. Consistent with our predictions, faces bearing heuristic infection cues held attention to a greater extent than did animal vectors of zoonotic infectious diseases. Moreover, the results indicated that attention showed a specialized vigilance toward processing facial cues connoting the presence of infectious diseases, whereas it was allocated comparably between animal disease vectors and disease-irrelevant animals. On the other hand, the pathogen salience manipulation employed to amplify the participants' contextual-level anti-pathogen motives did not moderate the selective allocation of attentional resources. The fact that visual attention seems poorly equipped to detect and encode animals' zoonotic transmission risk supports the idea that our evolved disease avoidance mechanisms might have limited effectiveness in combating global outbreaks originating from zoonotic emerging infectious diseases.
Açıklama
Anahtar Kelimeler
Behavioral immune system, evolutionary mismatch, pathogens, visual attention, zoonotic diseases
Kaynak
Journal of General Psychology
WoS Q Değeri
Q2
Scopus Q Değeri
Q1
Cilt
152
Sayı
1
