Disgust, anxiety and fainting symptoms associated with blood-injection-injury fears: a structural model

The present study examines the structural relations between disgust sensitivity, anxiety symptoms, blood-injection-injury (BII) fears, and fainting symptoms associated with BII fears in 259 nonclinical participants. Results revealed that both disgust and BII fear were independent predictors of fainting symptoms. However, structural equation modeling revealed that the relation between disgust sensitivity and fainting was reduced to negative and non-significance when the path from BII fear to fainting was also introduced. Subsequent analysis indicated that the relation between disgust sensitivity and fainting symptoms was fully mediated by BII fear. It was also found that animal reminder disgust was related to fainting symptoms whereas core disgust was not. However, the relation between animal reminder disgust and fainting was also fully mediated by BII fear. Furthermore, anxiety symptoms did not add directly to the structural model predicting fainting associated with BII fears. Implications of these findings for better understanding the interaction of the emotional mechanisms that mediate fainting responses in BII phobia are discussed.