Visual search of threat-relevantstimuli
Previous studies have shown that threat-related stimuli can be detected faster. However, they used stimuli that differed significantly in the characteristics of the images. The results of this study showed that potentially dangerous objects are detected faster than neutral ones when threatening stimuli could be recognized (experiments 1 and 2). However, when it was impossible to categorize objects (experiment 3), the effect disappeared. We have again demonstrated that threatening stimuli affect visual search, and this effect does not depend on the characteristics of stimuli.