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stimulus. After just one pairing of the shock with one of the fear-
relevant stimuli, people showed fear when the snake or spider was
shown without the shock, while it took more pairings of the shock
and the flower, mushroom, or geometric object for fear to be
aroused by these fear-irrelevant stimuli alone. People also stayed
afraid of the snake or spider, while fear faded over time in response
to the flower, mushroom, or geometric object.*
Of course we are afraid of snakes and spiders in our current envi-
ronment, so is it really evolution that explains Ohman's results? If
this counterargument were true, then people should respond to
other dangerous objects in our current environment, such as guns
and electrical outlets, just as they do to spiders and snakes. But that
is not what Ohman found. It took just as long to condition fear to
guns and electrical outlets as it took to condition fear to flowers,
mushrooms, and geometric objects. Guns and electrical outlets have
not been around long enough for natural selection to have devel-
oped them into universal triggers.12
In his extraordinarily prescient book The Expression of the Emo-
tions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin described an experiment
with a snake he performed more than a hundred years ago that fits
quite nicely with Ohman's recent work. "I put my face close to the
thick glass-plate in front of a puff-adder in the Zoological Gardens,
with the firm determination of not starting back if the snake struck
at me; but, as soon as the blow was struck, my resolution went for
nothing, and I jumped a yard or two backwards with astonishing
rapidity. My will and reason were powerless against the imagination
of a danger which had never been experienced."13
Darwin's experi-ence shows how rational thought cannot prevent a fearful response
to an innate fear theme, an issue to which I will return shortly.
It is not certain whether any such emotion themes operate as
active triggers prior to experience linking them to an emotional out-
come. Remember that in Ohman's research some experience was
required for the snake and spider to become fear triggers; they were
not frightening on initial exposure. It took only one association with*E. O. Wilson has discussed the fear of snakes in terms that are very consistent with what I have pre-
sented. Although he does not apply his framework specifically to emotion, it is very consistent with
what I am suggesting about the emotion data base. (See Consilience, Random House, 1998, especially
pages 136-40.)
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