It is believed that our attentional systems are hard-wired to attend to threat; however, an alternative explanation is simply that attention is quickly drawn to the stimulus of most personal relevance in the environment. We used an eye tracker to monitor attention to threat stimuli (spiders) and to positive stimuli with no biological or evolutionary relevance (pictures from the television program Dr. Who) during a target search task. We found that distracter pictures from Dr. Who were fixated on more quickly and were allocated more attention in terms of overall dwell time than were pictures of spiders by participants who had a strong interest in Dr. Who. As such, allocation of attention was guided by the personal relevance of the images, rather than their threat content per se. The attentional system believed to have a causal role in anxiety disordersmay therefore be a general system that responds to stimulus relevance rather than being specific to threat; hence, non-evolutionary images, such as those from Dr Who, are allocated attention in a similar manner as are fear relevant, spider, images. For people with an interest in Dr.Who and a fear of spiders therefore, the Empress of Racnoss (a spider-like creature who features in the program) might be the ultimate attention-grabbing stimulus.
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