Arachnophobia is a
specific phobia
Specific phobia is an anxiety disorder, characterized by an extreme, unreasonable, and irrational fear associated with a specific object, situation, or concept which poses little or no actual danger. Specific phobia can lead to avoidance of the o ...
brought about by the irrational fear of
spiders and other
arachnid
Arachnida () is a class of joint-legged invertebrate animals (arthropods), in the subphylum Chelicerata. Arachnida includes, among others, spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites, pseudoscorpions, harvestmen, camel spiders, whip spiders and vinegaro ...
s such as
scorpions.
Signs and symptoms
People with arachnophobia tend to feel
uneasy in any area they believe could harbour spiders or that has visible signs of their presence, such as
webs. If arachnophobes see a spider, they may not enter the general vicinity until they have overcome the
panic attack that is often associated with their phobia. Some people
scream,
cry
Crying is the dropping of tears (or welling of tears in the eyes) in response to an emotional state, or pain. Emotions that can lead to crying include sadness, anger, and even happiness. The act of crying has been defined as "a complex secreto ...
, have emotional outbursts, experience trouble breathing,
sweat and experience increased heart rates when they come in contact with an area near spiders or their webs. In some extreme cases, even a
picture
An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimension ...
, a toy, or a realistic drawing of a spider can
trigger intense
fear.
Reasons
Arachnophobia may be an exaggerated form of an
instinctive response that helped early humans to survive or a cultural phenomenon that is most common in predominantly European societies.
Evolutionary
An evolutionary reason for the phobia remains unresolved. One view, especially held in
evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolv ...
, is that the presence of
venomous spiders led to the evolution of a fear of spiders, or made acquisition of a fear of spiders especially easy. Like all traits, there is variability in the intensity of fear of spiders, and those with more intense fears are classified as phobic. Being relatively small, spiders do not fit the usual criterion for a threat in the
animal kingdom where size is a factor, but they can have medically significant
venom and/or cause skin irritation with their
setae
In biology, setae (singular seta ; from the Latin word for "bristle") are any of a number of different bristle- or hair-like structures on living organisms.
Animal setae
Protostomes
Annelid setae are stiff bristles present on the body. ...
. However, a phobia is an irrational fear as opposed to a rational fear.
By ensuring that their surroundings were free from spiders, arachnophobes would have had a reduced risk of being bitten in ancestral environments, giving them a slight advantage over non-arachnophobes in terms of survival. However, having a disproportionate fear of spiders in comparison to other, potentially dangerous creatures present during ''Homo sapiens
environment of evolutionary adaptiveness may have had drawbacks.
In ''The Handbook of the Emotions'' (1993), psychologist
Arne Öhman
Arne Öhman (31 May 1943 – 19 March 2020) was a Swedish psychologist who served as professor of psychology at the Karolinska Institutet from 1993 to 2010, where he was the head of the Department of Clinical Neuroscience from 2001 to 2004. He pr ...
studied pairing an
unconditioned stimulus with evolutionarily-relevant
fear-response neutral stimuli (
snakes and
spiders) versus evolutionarily-irrelevant fear-response neutral stimuli (
mushroom
A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. ''Toadstool'' generally denotes one poisonous to humans.
The standard for the name "mushroom" is t ...
s,
flowers,
physical representation of
polyhedra,
firearms, and
electrical outlets) on human subjects and found that
ophidiophobia
Ophidiophobia (or ophiophobia) is a particular type of specific phobia, the irrational fear of snakes. It is sometimes called by a more general term, herpetophobia, fear of reptiles. The word comes from the Greek words "ophis" (), snake, and "phob ...
(fear of snakes) and arachnophobia required only one pairing to develop a
conditioned response
Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a triangle). It also refers to the lear ...
while mycophobia, anthophobia,
phobia
A phobia is an anxiety disorder defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation. Phobias typically result in a rapid onset of fear and are usually present for more than six months. Those affected go to great lengths to avoi ...
s of physical representations of polyhedra, firearms, and electrical outlets required multiple pairings and went
extinct without continued conditioning while the conditioned ophidiophobia and arachnophobia were permanent.
Psychiatrist
Randolph M. Nesse
Randolph M. Nesse (born 1948) is an American physician, scientist and author who is notable for his role as a founder of the field of evolutionary medicine and evolutionary psychiatry. He is professor of life sciences and ASU Foundation Profess ...
notes that while conditioned fear responses to evolutionarily novel dangerous objects such as electrical outlets is possible, the conditioning is slower because such cues have no
prewired connection to fear, noting further that despite the emphasis of the risks of
speeding and
drunk driving in
driver's education, it alone does not provide reliable protection against
traffic collisions and that nearly one-quarter of all deaths in 2014 of people aged 15 to 24 in the United States were in traffic collisions.
Nesse, psychiatrist
Isaac Marks
Isaac Meyer Marks (born 1935) was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He trained in medicine there, qualifying in 1956. His training as a psychiatrist began in 1960 at the University of London (at the Bethlem-Maudsley Hospital) and was completed in 1 ...
, and evolutionary biologist
George C. Williams have noted that people with systematically deficient responses to various
adaptive phobias (e.g. arachnophobia, ophidiophobia,
basophobia) are more
temperamentally careless and
more likely to receive unintentional injuries that are potentially fatal and have proposed that such deficient phobia should be classified as "hypophobia" due to its
selfish genetic consequences.
A 2001 study found that people could detect images of spiders among images of flowers and mushrooms more quickly than they could detect images of flowers or mushrooms among images of spiders. The researchers suggested that this was because fast response to spiders was more relevant to human evolution.
Cultural
An alternative view is that the dangers, such as from spiders, are overrated and not sufficient to influence evolution. Instead, inheriting phobias would have restrictive and debilitating effects upon survival, rather than being an aid. For some communities such as in
Papua New Guinea and
Cambodia
Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand ...
spiders are included in traditional foods. This suggests arachnophobia may, at least in part, be a cultural, rather than genetic trait.
Stories about spiders in the media often contain errors and use sensationalistic vocabulary, which could contribute to the fear of spiders.
Treatments
The
fear of spiders can be treated by any of the general techniques suggested for
specific phobia
Specific phobia is an anxiety disorder, characterized by an extreme, unreasonable, and irrational fear associated with a specific object, situation, or concept which poses little or no actual danger. Specific phobia can lead to avoidance of the o ...
s. The first line of treatment is
systematic desensitization
Systematic desensitization, or graduated exposure therapy, is a behavior therapy developed by the psychiatrist Joseph Wolpe. It is used when a phobia or anxiety disorder is maintained by classical conditioning. It shares the same elements of both c ...
– also known as
exposure therapy.
Before engaging in systematic desensitization, it is common to train the individual with arachnophobia in relaxation techniques, which will help keep the patient calm. Systematic desensitization can be done
in vivo (with live spiders) or by getting the individual to imagine situations involving spiders, then modelling interaction with spiders for the person affected and eventually interacting with real spiders. This technique can be effective in just one session, although it generally takes more time.
Recent advances in technology have enabled the use of
virtual or augmented reality spiders for use in therapy. These techniques have proven to be effective. It has been suggested that exposure to short clips from the
''Spider-Man'' movies may help to reduce an individual's arachnophobia.
Epidemiology
Arachnophobia affects 3.5 to 6.1 percent of the global population.
See also
*
Apiphobia, fear of bees
*
Entomophobia
Entomophobia sometimes known as Insectophobia is a specific phobia characterized by an excessive or unrealistic fear of one or more classes of insect, and classified as a phobia by the DSM-5. More specific cases includes arachnophobia (fear of spi ...
, fear of insects
*
Myrmecophobia
Myrmecophobia is the inexplicable fear of ants. It is a type of specific phobia. It is common for those who suffer from myrmecophobia to also have a wider fear of insects in general, as well as spiders (see Arachnophobia). Such a condition is known ...
, fear of ants
References
External links
*
National Geographic: "Fear of Snakes, Spiders Rooted in Evolution, Study Finds"
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Zoophobias
Arachnids and humans