Discover the psychology of fear of snakes and spiders

Scientists at the University of Queensland have found new evidence that can help them discover the most common fears of ours and their causes.

Hundreds of thousands of people consider snakes and spiders to be one of their fears, and while scientists have previously argued that we have a genetic predisposition to fear exotic animals, scientists at UQ's psychology school seems to prove the opposite

According to Dr. Helena Purkis, UQ's research results may provide an unprecedented understanding of why we are afraid of these creepy animals. Dr. Purkis said: 'Previous research indicates that we react to snakes and spiders differently than other stimuli, such as flowers or mushrooms, even to other dangerous animals, or cars, guns, things even more dangerous'.

'In the past, this has been explained that humans tend to be genetically afraid of certain things, such as snakes or spiders, which can be dangerous to their ancestors. me. However, people often get negative information about snakes and spiders, we think this makes them more associated with fears. '

Hundreds of thousands of people consider snakes and spiders to be one of their fears, and while scientists have previously argued that we have a genetic predisposition to fear exotic animals, scientists at UQ's psychology school seems to prove the opposite (Photo: iStockphoto / Holger Gogolin)

In this study, scientists compared the reactions to stimuli between participants who had no experience with snakes and spiders and snake and spider experts.'Previous studies suggest that snakes and spiders attract a lot of attention (they attract attention very quickly) and this creates a negative reaction (fear) . as a hidden subconscious and has money. rules, 'said Dr. Purkis. 'We have shown that although everyone carefully approaches snakes and spiders because they are dangerous, only inexperienced people exhibit negative reactions'.

This is the first study to build a clear difference between preferential attention and permanent emotional response: you can carefully approach something without a negative emotional response. Dr. Purkis said the discovery could significantly increase understanding of the emotional and basic cognitive processes involved in the formation and maintenance of fear.

'If we understand the relationship between attention and emotion priority, it will help us understand how a stimulus comes from being perceived as potentially dangerous to creating an antipathy. emotional response and then attaching it to fear '.

'This can give us information about how humans deal with snakes and spiders to minimize the negative emotional response'. Researchers are planning to continue the study, this time testing the theory that pleasure and fear have the same basic attention mechanism.

'We are interested in experimenting with animal stimuli for animal lovers to know whether those stimuli, such as checking on a breeder dog, are related to attention. preferential or not. (like the way snakes and spiders affect those who fear them). I am also interested in the differences that we have seen in our previous studies between alert attention, and the emotional response formed after the initial process. '

The study calls for those who voluntarily own or work with dogs, cats, cows, horses, snakes and spiders and even members of the community to form a control group.'I also need people who are allergic to dogs or cats, who are afraid of snakes and spiders, even those who are not afraid of them but do not work with them, ' said Dr. Purkis. 'In addition, we would love to contact those who are ready for their pets (dogs, cats, horses, cows, snakes, spiders) to take pictures for use as stimuli in experiments'.