Guangsheng Liang¹, William G. Hayward¹; ¹Lingnan University, Hong Kong SAR

Recent research has identified a proactive behavioral mechanism that seeks to reduce potential exposure to pathogens; this mechanism has been called the behavioral immune system (BIS). Individuals can accurately detect potential exposure to pathogens through visual perception, and it has been demonstrated that a more aggressive immune response could also be elicited by visually presented infectious disease symptoms. In this study, we further explore the influence of this visually-elicited BIS through multiple cognitive tasks. We elicited the BIS via implementing a learning session with disease symptom pictures (infectious vs. non-infectious disease). Participants were tasked to perform a classic Go/no-go (GNG) task after the symptom presentation to evaluate the immediate influence of visual BIS priming on impulsivity. In addition, before and after the presentation of symptom pictures, participants were instructed to report their current emotional state and complete an Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) to assess their changes in emotion and risk preference in response to the BIS activation. A classic GNG task result was observed among participants viewing non-infectious disease symptoms: accuracy was lower in the response-inhibit condition. Importantly, this pattern disappeared among participants viewing infectious disease symptoms. Moreover, accuracy in both GNG task response conditions after viewing infectious disease symptoms was equivalent to GNG performance in the response-inhibit condition after viewing non-infectious disease symptoms, indicating an impairment of instrumental behavior performance. Although the IGT performance was equivalent between manipulated conditions, participants’ risk preferences varied before and after learning. Specifically, participants in both groups improved their decision quality, but only those who viewed infectious disease symptoms showed a trend from a preference for a low-frequency high-penalty to a high-frequency low-penalty. These findings provide extended evidence of the relationship between the visual system and physiological responses to potential vectors of disease.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by a Special Topics Grant from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (STR4/M-701/23-N) to William G. Hayward.