| Abstract [eng] |
The present paper attempts to provide a more coherent outlook on threat detection and perception, and the phenomenon of initial judgment’s influence on subsequent ones. The prime objective of our study was to ascertain if there exists a link between potentially neutral and social situations’ appraisals. To be more specific, our aim was to investigate the relationship of threat detection in neutral stimulus and ambiguous social situations. The study involved 111 participants, 51 male and 60 female students, falling into the age range from 22 to 24. To achieve the main goals of our study a specially designed research methodology was developed. Firstly, a questionnaire indicating potentially threatening life events was created. After completing the questionnaire, the participants were asked to rate threat levels of 7 neutral situations (mini-films) and 16 ambiguous social situations. The findings of our study suggest that initial individual’s judgment affects his/ her subsequent ones, namely if higher threat levels are detected while rating neutral stimulus it is very likely, that the same high levels of threat will be attributed to social situations. A more detailed analysis of our experimental evidence indicated that the tendency to detect threat increases when an individual has experienced one or more threatening life events during the past 12 months. Furthermore, our data suggests that there are some particular threatening life-events, which highly increase threat detection and perception. Gender differences were noted in the tendency to detect and perceive threat. Men were found to be more threat vigilant in neutral situations and women – in social situations. Although women were found to be more biased to detect and perceive threat when previously experienced threatening life event. The analysis of subjective threat perception in individual’s past, present and future shows, that higher threat levels of subjective reality on the whole lead to increased threat detection tendency in either neutral and social situations. It was found that higher threat levels of subjectively perceived one’s future most significantly affect heightened threat detection and initial judgment’s influence on subsequent ones. The tentative findings of this study suggest that it is relevant and could be continued by involving a more detailed qualitative analysis and a larger sample of participants. |
