The word “scared” doesn’t even come close to describing my preschool daughter’s fear of spiders. “Petrified,” “terror-stricken,” and “alarmed” don’t do her anxiety justice either.
It’s nearly impossible to describe in a single word what happens when my otherwise fearless daughter catches sight of eight long black legs scuttling across the floor.
Simply put, she freaks out.
She screams as though someone was ripping out her hair with his or her bare hands. She can’t (or won’t) run away because she is paralyzed with fear, and she has a hard time uttering anything more than “sp-sp-sp-sp-iiiiiiiiiiiii-DER!” in between huge gasps for air.
Her reaction is really quite a sight to see… and not in a good way.
Unless of course you’re a developmental psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, in which case you’d probably revel in my daughter’s anxiety attack and wished that she could have participated in your latest study on how females are genetically predisposed to develop fears of potentially dangerous animals.
I ran across such a study when researching ways to eliminate my daughter’s fear of spiders. Apparently, she is not alone when it comes to being deathly afraid of multi-legged creepy crawlers. What’s more, her distress may not be a displaced call for attention, after all. (One of my early theories that has since been blown out of the water.)
According to researchers, females are four times more likely to scream and run when they come into contact with scary insects or animals because they are genetically predisposed to do so.
Psychologists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, found that babies girls as young as 11 months old associate pictures of spiders with fear. Meanwhile, baby boys remain blithely indifferent to the connection, thereby implying that males do not have an inborn fear of spiders.
According to researcher, the study’s results suggest that girls are more inclined than boys to learn to fear dangerous animals. Conversely, other phobias such as fear of flying or heights show no gender difference.
Researchers say the role gender plays in one’s fear of dangerous animals (or insects) can be attributed to the innate differences men and women have displayed since the beginning of time. Back in the days of the cavemen, an aversion to spiders may have helped women avoid dangerous animals. However, in the days when men hunted in order to survive, risk-taking behavior was necessary to be successful.
So what do the results of this new study mean for my spider-fearing daughter?
According to clinical psychologists, exposure therapy may help, but given that being scared of spiders is genetically predisposed, it may be more difficult for my child to “unlearn” the association between spiders and a fearful response.
Bottom line: She will have to live with the fear, but her reaction can be modified.
Are you or your daughters afraid of spiders?
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