The assessment of gender differences in perceptual fear generalization and related processes

In this study we aimed to investigate gender differences in fear generalization tendencies in humans and, inspired by recent findings in animal research, examine whether any such differences could stem from differences in memory precision. Forty men and forty women underwent a differential fear conditioning procedure using geometric shapes as cues. Subsequently, generalized fear responses were assessed across a spectrum of perceptually similar shapes. Throughout generalization testing, perceptual memory accuracy was repeatedly probed using a stimulus recreation task. Using statistical and computational modeling, we found strong evidence for the absence of gender differences in fear learning and generalization behavior. The evidence for gender differences in related processes such as perception and memory was inconclusive. Although some of our findings hinted at the possibility that women may be more perceptive of physical differences between stimuli and have more accurate memory than men, those observations were not consistently replicated across experimental conditions and analytical approaches. Our results contribute to the emerging literature on gender differences in perceptual fear generalization in humans and cast doubt on the transferability of the notion derived from animal studies of poorer memory in females than males in the context of fear generalization.