Human Psychophysiological Responses to Ancestral and Modern Threat Stimuli

119 participants' skin resistance recordings in response to photos of venomous snakes, heights, airborne diseases, and firearms, supplemented by fear ratings. The dataset was created by Iveta Štolhoferová and last updated in March 2026. Results showed the most frequent reactions to heights, followed by snakes, firearms, and airborne diseases.

Use Cases

• Compare physiological response intensity between ancestral and modern threat categories based on skin resistance amplitude data.
• Model the relationship between subjective fear ratings and the probability of a skin resistance change.
• Analyze differences in electrodermal response patterns within the ancestral threat category (e.g., heights vs. snakes).

Strengths

• Includes data from 119 human participants.
• Contains both physiological (skin resistance) and subjective (fear rating) measurements for each stimulus.
• Covers four distinct threat categories with approximately 30 participants per category.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The 274.7 KB file size indicates a relatively small dataset with limited scope.

Provenance

Source

Iveta Štolhoferová via figshare

Collection Method

Collected recordings from participants exposed to visual threat stimuli.

Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-18 17:23:41; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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