Fear-based attitudes track individual differences in sensitivity to negative emotion

Evidence

Emotional stability was also expected to be negatively correlated with the IS, because emotionally unstable individuals are characterized by their sensitivity to negative stimuli (Eysenck, 1967). Because Islamophobia is based on the negative emotion of fear (Lee et al., 2009), we believed that individuals who are sensitive to negative emotions would also be influenced as well. — Sherman A. Lee, Chelsea A. Reid, Stephen D. Short, Jeffrey A. Gibbons, Ruth Yeh, and Matthew L. Campbell, Fear of Muslims, 36

Categorization

• QUESTION: Circularity risk — if Islamophobia is defined by fear, then fear-sensitivity predicting it is nearly tautological.