Affective and cognitive responses to insects and other arthropods

"Insects are the most abundant and diverse group of animals on Earth. Though as a group they do far more ecological good than harm, previous studies have shown that human attitudes toward insects are mainly negative. Attitudes have affective (emotions) and cognitive (beliefs, mental representations) components that interact to influence behavior. Negative attitudes toward insects are associated with negative affect such as disgust and fear, and can have negative consequences, such as a lack of conservation funding. In addition, negative attitudes can cause people to avoid insects and/or feel distress when insects are present, prompting a disconnection between the public and the insect world. To explore affective responses to insects, Chapter Two focuses on the emotion of disgust. Disgust is associated with avoidance of objects that cause sickness (e.g. rotten meat) or undesirable social conduct (e.g. moral disgust). Disgust is partitioned into distinct domains - pathogen, moral, sexual, etc. To determine whether disgust stimulated by insects belongs in a unique domain, incoming freshmen at a large public university were surveyed (Chapter Two). Survey items pertained to moral, pathogen, and insect-specific disgust. Factor analyses indicate that insect disgust and pathogen disgust are part of the same construct, unique from moral disgust. This implies that insects are perceived with the same feelings of disgust felt for pathogens. To explore cognition associated with insects, Chapter Three and Appendix One focus on mental models of insects and other arthropods. Mental models are internal representations of external entities that are used to reason, make inferences, conduct thought experiments, and anticipate future events. Drawings reflect important qualities of mental models including knowledge categorization and organization. Drawings of insects were collected from participants with high and low expertise in entomology. Salient insect features were indexed and principal components analysis applied to detect underlying patterns. Two distinct components emerged - (1) a non-winged "crawling" insect, and (2) a legless winged "flying" insect, implying that flying and crawling insects are perceived as distinct from each other (Chapter Three). A similar analysis of children's drawings of insects also showed a distinction between crawling and flying insects (Appendix One). Finally, to explore the interaction between affective and cognitive responses to insects, drawings of "disgusting" and "not disgusting" insects from participants sampled in Chapter Three were compared. Participants were also surveyed to gain a quantitative measure of disgust associated with insects. Experts exhibited significantly lower disgust responses than novices. Additionally, the inclusion of legs on drawings of insects deemed not disgusting correlated negatively with disgust. In contrast, the inclusion of legs on drawings of disgusting insects correlated positively with disgust. This suggests that crawling insects may be regarded as being more disgusting than flying insects. A multiple linear regression was conducted on the not disgusting insect drawings to determine whether drawing a crawling insect as well as one's expertise level, could predict insect-associated disgust. Approximately 35% of the variation in disgust was attributable to subject group (expertise) and the degree to which drawings aligned with the crawling insect model. In addition, this study also demonstrates that examining drawings of insects can be a useful tool to shed light on affect and cognition associated with insects."--Pages ii-iii.