Data from the paper: Better safe than wealthy: Dysfunctional risk avoidance in spider-fearful individuals

Previous research has documented that fearful individuals avoid fear-relevant cues even if they incur costs in
doing so. Paradigms that were previously used to study avoidance in the lab, manipulated reward contingencies
in favor of selecting either fear-relevant or neutral cues, e.g., spiders versus butterflies. We, thus, developed a
paradigm where the chance of monetary gains was linked with increasing probability of a fear-relevant or a
neutral outcome. To this end, we modified the well-established Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) to include
fear-relevant outcomes.
Individuals with and without fear of spiders (N = 35) were offered the chance to inflate balloons, with more
pumps resulting in larger gains. However, if the balloon exploded, this resulted in a loss of money – and at the
same time in the presentation of a picture, either a fear-relevant spider or a neutral butterfly (emotional Balloon
Analogue Risk Task; eBART). We operationalized risk aversion as the number of pumps and dysfunctionality of
decision strategy as the amount of money that participants earned. In addition, decisional conflict was measured
by response times for each decision.
The data indicate, that spider-fearful individuals were generally more risk-averse and much more so in trials
with fear-relevant stimuli as part of the negative outcome. Overall, this resulted in smaller amount of money that
spider-fearful individuals earned compared to spider non-fearful individuals. Interestingly, spider-fearful
compared to spider non-fearful individuals generally responded more hesitantly on all trials, and more so
when they feared to encounter a spider.
This research introduces a new paradigm and provides ecologically valid evidence for costly avoidance
behavior in spider-fearful individuals. The eBART may be a promising new research tool to examine risk
avoidance with emotionally relevant stimuli.