Table 1.
Summary of studies, instruments, and contributions about trypophobia.
| Reference | Type of sample | Instruments employed | Main findings and contributions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rufo (11) | Case report | Psychiatrist’s report | First available description about a girl who expressed panic when facing any image of repetitive patterns, specially holes |
| Cole and Wilkins (2) | General population of adults and adults who claim to suffer from trypophobia | Rating scales, spectral analysis | All trypophobic images possess high-contrast energy in midrange spatial frequencies, a feature also shared by images of poisonous animals. People in general experience discomfort when looking at trypophobic images |
| Le et al. (13) | General population of adults and adults who claim to suffer from trypophobia (Facebook group) | Rating scales, questionnaire | The construction of the TQ and the presentation of its psychometric properties. They confirm that people who suffer from high levels of trypophobia are more sensitive to images with high-contrast energy in midrange spatial frequencies. Both images of holes and bumps can trigger trypophobic symptoms. Also, the bigger the cluster, the higher the trypophobic response |
| Chaya et al. (14) | General population of adults (recruited online) | TQ, Liebowitz Social Anxiety (SA) Scale, Discomfort Rating Score | SA has a significant indirect effect on the discomfort associated with eye clusters, which was mediated by trypophobia. The same happens with clusters of faces. The results suggest both SA and trypophobia contribute to the discomfort some people experience when gazed by many people |
| Imaizumi et al. (17) | General population of adults (recruited online) | TQ, Disgust Scale-Revised, Interpersonal Reactivity Index | Trypophobia proneness is predicted by core disgust sensitivity, personal distress, and proneness to visual discomfort |
| Vlok-Barnard and Stein (18) | Adults who claim to suffer from trypophobia (Facebook group) | Self-report questionnaire, Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, Sheehan Disability Scale, and items from Zohar–Fineberg Obsessive–Compulsive Screen and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -5 criteria for Specific phobias | Trypophobic symptoms are chronic and persistent and cause significant distress. The most common co-morbidity diagnoses are major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. The most common trypophobic symptom is disgust rather than fear when confronted with trypophobic images |
| Can et al. (19) | 4-year-old children randomly recruited | Self-report, categorization task | Trypophobic stimuli are associated with discomfort in children due the visual features of said stimuli. The results suggest that such discomfort is due to an instinctive response to the stimuli visual features rather than the result of a learned but non-conscious association with venomous animals |
| Kupfer and Le (20) | General population of adults and adults who claim to suffer from trypophobia (Facebook group) | Fear and disgust self-report scales, Three Domain Disgust Scale, Neuroticism subscale (from Big Five Inventory) | Both people who suffer from trypophobia and who did not report aversion towards disease-relevant cluster stimuli, but only the trypophobic group reported aversion towards objectively harmless cluster stimuli that had no relevance to disease. Aversive responses were predominantly based on disgust |
| Sasaki et al. (21) | General population of adults | TQ, Discomfort scale | Trypophobic discomfort can be caused both by mid- and low-frequency visual components |
| Yamada and Sasaki (22) | General population of adults (recruited online) | Discomfort surveys | Discomfort evoked by trypophobic images is higher amongst participants with history of skin problems |