I will forever be annoyed by the high squeals, quick dodges and feverish jumps of my peers, elders and the youthful when their eyes meet a spider. I will confess that some of them are quite alarming with their long legs and strange hairiness when they confront you, but I have never been the type to run or cry when I encounter a spider. Why is it so common that people have arachnophobia compared to any other creepy crawler? Especially when spiders present no large possibility of harming someone.
Automatically I assumed it was a personal thing among people. Something tragic happened as a child and now you can’t kill a spider, classic! But no. Instead “spiders are an evolutionary-persistent ancestral hazard that humans are especially attuned to”. Consider your ancestors, “during the early evolutionary phases of humans in Africa” lived amongst deadly venomous spiders. Widow spiders, Tarantulas, and Sicariidae had the ability to both kill and immobilize a person for many days or weeks which could essentially lead to death. Spiders created such a deep fear that it was “eventually embedded at a genetic level.” People developed a critical awareness to spiders that was necessary for survival. Only the most alert of the danger were able to survive and evolve.
This idea that arachnophobia is genetic was tested by scientist Joshua New at Barnard University using 252 volunteers. They were asked to examine which line of a cross was longer on a computer screen. For milliseconds the scientists would have objects appear on the screen that were “modern threats, fear irrelevant and ancestral hazards”. Even when the image of the spider was distorted over half the participants were able to identify what it was and where it had appear on the screen. Less than 15% of participants noticed that modern threats and irrelevant fears had appeared on the screen. This study exemplifies how aware humans are to spiders, even when placed next to modern threats like needles that is associated with pain and anxiety.
Say Dr. New is full of nonsense. The possibility that a person has been socially conditioned to have arachnophobia is highly likely. As a child your mother could have run, screamed and jumped on a table at the sight of the spider and through that you were taught an emotional response to dealing with spiders. Also through personal experiences can a person develop arachnophobia. It is said that during your life time you will eat more than a couple spiders during the night. If a person happened to wake up during this occurrence it would be a traumatic experience and this person is likely to develop a large fear of spiders.
Whether this fear is deeply rooted in ones genetics or personally learned it is hard to deny spiders are really hard to look at
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I am not a person who is scared of spiders but when I see one I feel like I want it to dissapear as soon as possible. I think that one of the reasons most of people tend do not like spiders is their unpleasant look and our bent to like things that look attractive and beautiful. I never thought that people are genetically predisposed to be afraid of spiders and that we can be conditioned for it. It is a good questin to answer what has more impact on person who fears spiders: genetic or environment? I am wondering if it works the same for any other things that people usually are scared of?
I absolutely hate spiders. I don’t know why, I just do. They are gross and scary. But, they are also pretty harmless. I did not know that this fear has been handed down from generation to generation starting with the beginning of mankind! Thats crazy but it makes a lot of sense. I rarely run into someone who doesn’t get nervous around spiders. Is it likely that majority of the worlds population has arachnophobia? I never considered myself an arachnophobe. I’m not necessarily afraid of spiders, I just don’t like them. It would be interesting to conduct a study observing people over the course of decades. Maybe, the fear is mostly a childhood thing?
I have honestly never thought about the science of arachnophobia until now. This blog was very informative, and it actually made me wonder if I was born with this condition, or if it was a case of nature vs. nurture. Perhaps a way to study if a fear of spiders is genetic is to question family members of those with arachnophobia and see if it exists in parents and siblings. Another way this fear could have been nurtured is through society, we associate spiders with scariness and halloween, so it only makes sense to fear spiders. Heres a little history on the association of spiders with halloween. http://wild.enature.com/blog/why-are-bats-spiders-and-even-owls-considered-the-scary-creaturs-of-hallowe