How would you feel if you suddenly saw a spider scurrying across your living room floor?
Most spiders are venomous, but only a tiny fraction pose any real danger to humans. Estimates from the Environmental Research and Education Institute suggest fewer than ten people worldwide die each year from spider bites, though accurate data on this is hard to come by.
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Even so, many people — myself included — say they suffer from arachnophobia. I can't sleep if I know there's a spider in my room, and just thinking about spider webs is enough to give me the shivers.
In many cases, a phobia is an intense fear of something that, in itself at least, cannot cause us serious harm.
So why are these fears so widespread? And where do they come from?
From Fear to Phobia
Vanessa Lobue, professor of psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, says fear is a basic survival emotion.
"Fear is important because it protects us from things that might be dangerous to us," she explains.
Seeing spiders in the house is a familiar experience for many people, but some feel far more distress and fear about it than others.
But when fear becomes so intense that it disrupts a person's life, it can be considered a phobia, according to Andras Zsido, director of the Visual Perception and Emotion Laboratory at the University of Pécs in Hungary.
"You can think of it as a spectrum," he says, "starting with completely normal fear — everyone is afraid of something. But when that fear starts interfering with your daily life, it can then be considered a phobia."
Lobue also notes that phobias are often far larger than the actual level of danger involved.
In some parts of the world, such as the UK, where I live, most snake species pose no danger to humans, so an intense fear of them may be irrational and classified as a phobia. In other parts of the world, however, that fear may be more justified.
Innate or Learned?
Despite how common certain phobias are, most experts don't believe we're born with them. Lobue points out that fear is a feeling infants can't yet experience in the first months of life.
"We don't see fear until later, because feeling it requires recognizing that something represents a threat, and to reach that recognition you first need to have acquired some knowledge of the world around you," she says.
So if we aren't born afraid of spiders or snakes, why do people specifically develop phobias of these creatures?
Stephanie Hoehl, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Vienna in Austria, conducted a study finding that infants' pupils dilated more when they saw images of snakes or spiders compared to images of flowers or fish.
Pupil dilation can be a sign of perceiving potential danger. This is linked to activation of the noradrenergic system, which plays a role in the body's "fight or flight" response — accompanied by an increased heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate, as the body prepares either to flee a perceived danger or confront it.
Hoehl doesn't believe fear itself is innate, but she says we may be quicker at detecting certain things in our environment than others, perhaps partly due to the way they move.
"There are things in the world we're more predisposed to learn to fear," she says.
We may not be born with phobias, but some experts believe we may be genetically predisposed to learn fear of certain things.
Lobue believes we may be more prone to learning fear of spiders and snakes compared to other animals simply because they seem "strange" to us — a view I fully share.
"Think about a snake," she says. "There's nothing else in the world quite like it."
She adds: "Think about how children usually look at animals: creatures with four legs that walk, right? Snakes don't do that. And spiders move in unfamiliar ways. That unsettles us."
Some experts believe this tendency to fear certain things may be a product of evolution. "Early humans lived in an environment where it was difficult to predict what might happen," Zsido says.
He adds: "Every fear and every phobia made sense and was justified at some point in human evolution, but a lot of it is no longer useful or rational in our daily lives today."
Lobue says the way spiders and snakes move may trigger a sense of unease in us."Spiders and snakes move in ways that make us anxious," she says.
But evolutionary predisposition to learn certain kinds of fear — known as "preparedness theory" — isn't enough on its own to produce a phobia.
According to Lobue, a direct negative experience with an animal or object is one of the fastest ways to learn to fear it, especially if we already have a natural predisposition toward that fear.
But we can also learn fear by observing negative reactions in others.
"You have a physical response — say, you get bitten, or you're startled," Lobue says.
"Then you see your mother's reaction, or hear her say, 'Yes, that's really bad'... and that increases the likelihood you'll learn to fear it too."
For this reason, Hoehl says phobias can be passed down from one generation to the next.
Look at the Movies
Since our experiences shape what we learn to fear, Lobue believes popular culture also bears some responsibility for how widespread fear of snakes and spiders has become.
"Look at the movies, look at the books. When is a snake or a spider ever the hero who saves the day? Never," she says.
Lobue believes the way certain animals are portrayed in films and books may contribute to why some people fear them.
There may be another factor behind fear of elements of the natural world, sometimes referred to as "biophobia."
Zsido studied whether there's a relationship between how urbanized a person's environment is and their likelihood of developing a fear of animals. He found that this type of phobia becomes more common as urbanization increases.
"It seems that people who spend more time in nature, and have more experience dealing with it, tend to be less afraid of the animals they might encounter," he says.
With more than 80% of the world's population now living in urban areas, it may not be surprising that animal-related phobias are so widespread.
Overcoming Our Fears
Most experts agree on two things: phobias can be overcome, and the best way to do so is through gradual exposure to what we fear.
"If you feel a certain level of discomfort in certain situations, it can help to gently push yourself to face them," Hoehl says.
Lobue suggests starting with small steps — such as looking at pictures of the thing we fear, learning positive information about it, and then gradually increasing exposure to it.
If the phobia is severe and significantly affects a person's life, however, it may be better to seek professional help.
Research suggests that people who spend more time in nature may be less prone to developing phobias related to it.
Zsido's research also supports the idea that exposure doesn't just help us overcome fears we've already developed — it may also prevent them from forming in the first place.
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"Personal experience is the most important factor in the development of fear. If the experience is positive — during childhood, for instance, or through education, or in some other context — it essentially acts as a protective factor against the development of fear," he says.
Lobue stresses that fear protects us and that having it is useful, but she also insists we aren't powerless against the phobias we experience.
"You're not condemned to stay afraid of something forever. If you're afraid of something and don't want that fear to continue, there are solutions," she says.
As for me, I don't know whether I learned my fear of spiders from one of my parents, picked it up from a film I watched, or simply haven't encountered enough spiders in my life. It's probably a mix of all of that. But perhaps writing this article is my first step toward overcoming it.
