Emotions triggered by live arthropods shed light on spider phobia

The influence of spider news on online information-seeking

Fear of spiders is a widespread condition often disproportionate to the actual danger spiders pose to humans. Likely rooted in evolutionary history, fear of spiders might also have a cultural component. Recent studies have shown that a significant fraction of spider-related media reports are misleading and sensationalistic. Information-seeking behaviours serve as common coping mechanisms for our fears and anxieties, yet the link between spider-related news stories and such behaviors remains unexplored.We hypothesize that media reports foster concern about spiders, resulting in an increased awareness of spiders and health issues associated with them. We extracted 1486 reports in English from a public database providing a content-analysis of spider-related online traditional media reports published between 2010-2020. We examined whether the volume of spider-related queries in Google Trends, Wikipedia, and iNaturalist increased in the week following the publication of each news story.Sensationalistic news stories were associated with a small, significant increase in search volumes, compared to non-sensationalistic ones. The search volume for "brown recluse" (Loxosceles reclusa), which are potentially dangerous spiders, was higher after the publication date of news related to human-spider encounters. There was a significant positive relationship between the number of spider-related news stories published in a given month and the traffic on target spider-related Wikipedia pages, especially so for the page on brown recluse spiders.Our results suggest that traditional media have a detectable impact on the behaviour of the general public towards spiders, supporting the hypothesis that the fear of spiders is perpetuated by culture. Additionally, our findings indicate that information-seeking behaviour is a common response to learn about spiders and potentially fact-check spurious claims found in sensationalised news. By recognizing the role of media in shaping attitudes towards spiders and acknowledging the benefits of accurate representation, we can lay the foundation for a more informed and harmonious relationship between humans and spiders.

The fear of spiders: perceptual features assessed in augmented reality

Background

Persons with specific phobias typically generalize the dangerousness of the phobic animal to all members of its species, possibly as a result of malfunctioning brain circuitry normally providing quick and dirty identification of evolutionary-relevant stimuli. An objective assessment of which perceptual features make an animal more or less scary to phobic and non-phobic people would help overcome the limitations of the few studies available so far, based on self-reports.

Objective

To achieve this aim, we built an augmented reality setting where volunteers with different levels of fear of spiders were asked to make holographic spiders that look either dangerous or harmless. To reach this goal, a computerized interface allowed participants to modify the spider's perceptual features (hairiness, body/leg size, and locomotion) in real time.

Results

On average, the dangerous spiders were made hairy, thick, and moving according to spider-like locomotion; coherently, the harmless spiders were made hairless, slim, and moving according to a butterfly-like locomotion. However, these averaged preferences could not fully describe the complex relationship between perceptual preferences with each other and with arachnophobia symptoms. An example of a key finding revealed by cluster analysis is the similarity in perceptual preferences among participants with little or no fear of spiders, whereas participants with more arachnophobia symptoms expressed more varying preferences.

Conclusion

Perceptual preferences toward the spider's features were behaviorally assessed through an observational study, objectively confirming a generalization effect characterizing spider-fearful participants. These results advance our knowledge of phobic preferences and could be used to improve the acceptability of exposure therapies.

Attentional, emotional, and behavioral response toward spiders, scorpions, crabs, and snakes provides no evidence for generalized fear between spiders and scorpions

Spiders are among the animals evoking the highest fear and disgust and such a complex response might have been formed throughout human evolution. Ironically, most spiders do not present a serious threat, so the evolutionary explanation remains questionable. We suggest that other chelicerates, such as scorpions, have been potentially important in the formation and fixation of the spider-like category. In this eye-tracking study, we focused on the attentional, behavioral, and emotional response to images of spiders, scorpions, snakes, and crabs used as task-irrelevant distractors. Results show that spider-fearful subjects were selectively distracted by images of spiders and crabs. Interestingly, these stimuli were not rated as eliciting high fear contrary to the other animals. We hypothesize that spider-fearful participants might have mistaken crabs for spiders based on their shared physical characteristics. In contrast, subjects with no fear of spiders were the most distracted by snakes and scorpions which supports the view that scorpions as well as snakes are prioritized evolutionary relevant stimuli. We also found that the reaction time increased systematically with increasing subjective fear of spiders only when using spiders (and crabs to some extent) but not snakes and scorpions as distractors. The maximal pupil response covered not only the attentional and cognitive response but was also tightly correlated with the fear ratings of the picture stimuli. However, participants' fear of spiders did not affect individual reactions to scorpions measured by the maximal pupil response. We conclude that scorpions are evolutionary fear-relevant stimuli, however, the generalization between scorpions and spiders was not supported in spider-fearful participants. This result might be important for a better understanding of the evolution of spider phobia.

Animals evoking fear in the Cradle of Humankind: snakes, scorpions, and large carnivores

Theories explain the presence of fears and specific phobias elicited by animals in contemporary WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic) populations by their evolutionary past in Africa. Nevertheless, empirical data about fears of animals in the Cradle of Humankind are still fragmentary. To fill this gap, we examined which local animals are perceived as the most frightening by Somali people, who inhabit a markedly similar environment and the region where humans have evolved. We asked 236 raters to rank 42 stimuli according to their elicited fear. The stimuli were standardized pictures of species representing the local fauna. The results showed that the most frightening animals were snakes, scorpions, the centipede, and large carnivores (cheetahs and hyenas). These were followed up by lizards and spiders. Unlike in Europe, spiders represent less salient stimuli than scorpions for Somali respondents in this study. This conforms to the hypothesis suggesting that fear of spiders was extended or redirected from other chelicerates.

Toward a reliable detection of arachnophobia: subjective, behavioral, and neurophysiological measures of fear response

Introduction

The administration of questionnaires presents an easy way of obtaining important knowledge about phobic patients. However, it is not well known how these subjective measurements correspond to the patient's objective condition. Our study aimed to compare scores on questionnaires and image evaluation to the objective measurements of the behavioral approach test (BAT) and the neurophysiological effect of spiders extracted from fMRI measurements. The objective was to explore how reliably subjective statements about spiders and physiological and behavioral parameters discriminate between phobics and non-phobics, and what are the best predictors of overall brain activation.

Methods

Based on a clinical interview, 165 subjects were assigned to either a "phobic" or low-fear "control" group. Finally, 30 arachnophobic and 32 healthy control subjects (with low fear of spiders) participated in this study. They completed several questionnaires (SPQ, SNAQ, DS-R) and underwent a behavioral approach test (BAT) with a live tarantula. Then, they were measured in fMRI while watching blocks of pictures including spiders and snakes. Finally, the respondents rated all the visual stimuli according to perceived fear. We proposed the Spider Fear Index (SFI) as a value characterizing the level of spider fear, computed based on the fMRI measurements. We then treated this variable as the "neurophysiological effect of spiders" and examined its contribution to the respondents' fear ratings of the stimuli seen during the fMRI using the redundancy analysis (RDA).

Results

The results for fear ranks revealed that the SFI, SNAQ, DS-R, and SPQ scores had a significant effect, while BAT and SPQ scores loaded in the same direction of the first multivariate axis. The SFI was strongly correlated with both SPQ and BAT scores in the pooled sample of arachnophobic and healthy control subjects.

Discussion

Both SPQ and BAT scores have a high informative value about the subject's fear of spiders and together with subjective emotional evaluation of picture stimuli can be reliable predictors of spider phobia. These parameters provide easy and non-expensive but reliable measurement wherever more expensive devices such as magnetic resonance are not available. However, SFI still reflects individual variability within the phobic group, identifying individuals with higher brain activation, which may relate to more severe phobic reactions or other sources of fMRI signal variability.

Do Spiders Ride on the Fear of Scorpions? A Cross-Cultural Eye Tracking Study

Deep fear of spiders is common in many countries, yet its origin remains unexplained. In this study, we tested a hypothesis based on recent studies suggesting that fear of spiders might stem from a generalized fear of chelicerates or fear of scorpions. To this end, we conducted an eye tracking experiment using a spontaneous gaze preference paradigm, with spiders and scorpions (previously neglected but crucial stimuli) as threatening stimuli and grasshoppers as control stimuli. In total, 67 participants from Somaliland and 67 participants from the Czech Republic were recruited and presented with a sequence of paired images. Both Somali and Czech people looked longer (total duration of the gaze) and more often (number of fixations) on the threatening stimuli (spiders and scorpions) when presented with a control (grasshopper). When both threatening stimuli were presented together, Somali participants focused significantly more on the scorpion, whereas in Czech participants, the effect was less pronounced, and in Czech women it was not significant. This supports the hypothesis that fear of spiders originated as a generalized fear of scorpions. Moreover, the importance of spiders as fear-eliciting stimuli may be enhanced in the absence of scorpions in the environment.

Attraction or Repelling Effects of Commercial Plant Essential Oils on the Synanthropic Cheiracanthium mildei (Araneae: Cheiracanthiidae)

The northern yellow sac spider Cheiracanthium mildei L. Koch, is expanding its range to Central Europe, especially to synanthropic habitats. The spiders become unwanted companions because of the unreasonable fear - arachnophobia, and estetic reason - silk retreats in corners, capturing dust. The most commonly used substances against spiders are pesticides, which are, however, toxic. In our work we tested the attraction or repellence of 15 essential oils (EO) from plants representing eight families to C. mildei. Our research has shown a significant repellent effect of EO from three plants, namely Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merr. et L. M. Perry (Myrtales: Myrtaceae), Ananas comosus (L.) Merr. (Poales: Bromeliaceae) and Musa sp. (L.) (Zingiberales: Musaceae). In contrast, some EOs appeared to have an attraction effect, particularly Carum carvi L. (Apiales: Apiaceae). Zingiber officinale Roscoe (Zingiberales: Zingiberaceae) reduced the tendency of spiders to construct the silken retreat. S. aromaticum, A. sativus, Musa sp. and Z. officinale have the potential to be used as natural repellents against spiders.

An expert-curated global database of online newspaper articles on spiders and spider bites

Mass media plays an important role in the construction and circulation of risk perception associated with animals. Widely feared groups such as spiders frequently end up in the spotlight of traditional and social media. We compiled an expert-curated global database on the online newspaper coverage of human-spider encounters over the past ten years (2010–2020). This database includes information about the location of each human-spider encounter reported in the news article and a quantitative characterisation of the content—location, presence of photographs of spiders and bites, number and type of errors, consultation of experts, and a subjective assessment of sensationalism. In total, we collected 5348 unique news articles from 81 countries in 40 languages. The database refers to 211 identified and unidentified spider species and 2644 unique human-spider encounters (1121 bites and 147 as deadly bites). To facilitate data reuse, we explain the main caveats that need to be made when analysing this database and discuss research ideas and questions that can be explored with it.

Measurement(s)	Newspaper articles on human-spider encounters
Technology Type(s)	Manual extraction
Sample Characteristic - Organism	Spiders (Arachnida: Araneae)
Sample Characteristic - Environment	Online
Sample Characteristic - Location	Global