Arachnophobia is an excessive and irrational crippling and paralyzing fear of spiders. The fear of spiders is the third top phobia in America with 31% of the total population experiencing it and 55% of women and 18% of men making up the affected population. For a patient to be diagnosed with arachnophobia, the fear has to interfere with their day to day lives and hinder them from doing their normal tasks. The diagnosis process involves the psychologist holding a clinical interview which entails asking the patients specific questions to determine if what they are experiencing is just fear or a phobia that needs specialized attention. The patient is diagnosed with arachnophobia if they experience irrational fear in the presence of spiders, get anxiety or panic attacks in the presence of spiders, and the patient acknowledges the abnormality of their fear. They are also diagnosed as suffering from arachnophobia if they experience avoidance, and anticipatory distress at the thought of seeing or coming into contact with spiders and these feelings interfere with their capability to function normally. The doctor also asks the patient about their medical history, current symptoms, and recent life changes to evaluate if the phobia falls under the diagnosis criteria.
Arachnophobia patients exhibit emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and somatic symptoms as well as impairment in social and occupational functioning (Gebara, Barros-Neto, Gertsenchtein & Lotufo-Neto, 2016). The physical symptoms include the patient feeling dizzy, unsteady, lightheaded and faint at the sight of a spider or if they suspect that one may be lurking around (Wiederhold & Bouchard, 2014). They also experience excessive sweating, trembling and shivering in fear, experience hot flushes and chills and their heartbeats may fasten and palpitations and pounding experience. The patients feel numb at the sight of spiders or under the suspicion of having a spider around, become nauseous, vomit or diarrhea and they feel pain or tightness in their chests (Phillips & Little, 2016). They also suffer from headaches, experience dryness in their mouths and hear ringing in the ears as well as have episodes of confusion and disorientation.
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The psychological symptoms include an excessive fear of losing control, feelings of dread, detachment from the body, fear of dying from a spider bite and fear of collapsing (Ollendick & Muris, 2015). In instances when the symptoms are extreme the victim may experience panic attacks, suffer from stress and depression and make them feel overwhelmed. The victims also suffer from limiting and severe anxiety, feelings of embarrassment, isolation, feelings of helplessness and problems with forming and maintaining relationships (Wiederhold & Bouchard, 2014). The extreme fear of spiders is therefore mentally, physically and emotionally draining on the patients and should be treated as soon as it is diagnosed so that the patient can go back to their daily routines (Phillips & Little, 2016). In the treatment of the phobia, it is important for psychologists to know the causes of the phobia to make the right diagnosis and determine the most appropriate method of treatment.
The symptoms of arachnophobia stem from biological, psychological and socio-cultural factors and the cause determines the method of treatment (Phillips & Little, 2016). The socio-cultural causes of arachnophobia originate from the environment the individual was raised in or interacts in daily or for the most of their life. The phobia is caused by specific environmental triggers which agitate the patient making the phobia to intensify (Mccann, Armstrong, Skopp, Edwards-Stewart, Smolenski, June, Reger, 2014). Gender determines the prevalence of arachnophobia with women being more susceptible to the phobia compared to their male counterparts. Researchers attribute the gender difference factor to the gender socialization role whereby women can openly express fear while their male counterparts suppress it for fear of appearing weak (Gebara et.al., 2016). The mother-daughter relationship hypothesis is also used to explain the phobia prevalence in women in that it weakens the psychological boundaries making women easier to emotional breakdown than men.
Specific Environmental Triggers also highly contribute to the excessive fear of spiders. They are the external stimulus within the victim’s surroundings that bring on fear and agitation (Mccann et.al., 2014). For instance, a person with arachnophobia may have escalated phobia in natural surroundings, in old houses or in places where spiders are most likely to appear. The thought of the possibility of a spider crawling in front of them can cause a panic attack and to counter the environmental trigger factor, they avoid places where they may encounter the object of their phobia. Past traumatic occurrences also cause the phobia with a phobic stimulus (Ollendick & Muris, 2015). Studies show that the more frightening the previous trauma event was, the higher the likelihood of the phobia recurring in the future and even harmless stimulus will produce a similar excessive fear response.
Observational learning and modeling are also attributed to the development of fearful behavior towards spiders (Gebara et.al., 2016). Children are most likely to emulate what grownups around them fear without assessing the rationality of the behavior or the fear. The fear stimulus can also be painted as being very dangerous through the stories narrated to children sometimes as a misbehavior deterrent technique where they are told that if they misbehave a spider will bite them (Mccann et.al., 2014). They learn and internalize that knowledge and may grow with an irrational fear of spiders. Cultural factors have also been known to contribute to certain phobias with African Americans being more susceptible to phobias than their white counterparts (Ollendick & Muris, 2015). Cultural beliefs play a crucial part in shaping a child’s thought processes and if they grow up in a culture that encourages the fear of spiders be it through stories or narratives from adults they are more likely to develop a phobia for the object.
Psychologists explain arachnophobia using the two process model whereby abnormal behavior can be caused by classical conditioning, operant conditioning or by the social learning theory (Phillips & Little, 2016). According to classical conditioning, the phobia is acquired through classical conditioning and associative learning (Wiederhold & Bouchard, 2014). The idea was coined after Ivan Pavlov noticed that his dogs would salivate every time he entered the room because they associated his presence with food. He later conditioned them to salivate at the sound of a bell instead and whenever it rang they salivated (Mccann et.al., 2014). The food was the unconditional stimuli, the bell the neutral stimuli, the salivating the conditions response and the bell ringing the conditioned stimulus.
Just like the dogs associated the bell with food people suffering from arachnophobia associate spiders even the harmless ones with the harmful ones and think all spiders will bite and poison them (Ollendick & Muris, 2015). They, therefore, develop the excessive fear of spiders based on their assumption that like the first spider that could have bitten or scared them was harmful every other spider is the same since their minds have been conditioned to believe so (Wiederhold & Bouchard, 2014). To confirm the assumption that classical conditioning causes phobia, Watson & Raynor experimented on an 11-month-old child called Little Albert who at the beginning of the experiment did not respond to objects including a white rat (Wiederhold & Bouchard, 2014). To determine if fear could be induced by past events' they created noise by hitting a metal with a hammer every time the child tried to reach out for the white rat thrice. After the incident, the child would cry every time he saw the white rat a response he elicited from his association of the rat with the loud, disturbing noise (Gebara et.al., 2016). Phobias are therefore a result of classical conditioning whereby the mind is trained to associate certain stimuli like spiders with excessive fear.
Operant conditioning, on the other hand, postulates that phobias are negatively reinforced and was coined by Burrhus Frederic Skinner who considered observant behavior more accurate in explaining human behavior (Ollendick & Muris, 2015). He believed that examining the causes and consequences of behavior explained human behavior best and that behavior can be strengthened, by removing an unpleasant consequence. The operant conditioning also posits that behavior that is not reinforced died out with time and experimented with the hypothesis using a skinner box using animals (Gebara et.al. 2016). When the test rat was placed in the box and got food after hitting the lever, the food acted as a positive reinforcement leading to a repeated behavior. When the same rat was exposed to electric shock on hitting the lever, it developed an escape and avoidance learning mechanism whereby it would go straight to the lever to avoid knocking it and feeling the electric shock (Phillips & Little, 2016). He, therefore, concluded that behaviors like arachnophobia are maintained through negative reinforcement which explains why people suffering from excessive fear of spider avoid them at all costs.
The excessive response to fear of spiders can be biologically explained through the functioning of the autonomic nervous system (Mccann et.al. 2014). The autonomic nervous system mediates the neuronal and hormonal response to stress and is divided into three parts which are the sympathetic nervous system, the sympathoadrenal response and the stress response system (Ollendick & Muris, 2015). The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the mobilization of the body’s nervous system fight-or-flight response and the maintenance of homeostasis. The sympathoadrenal system is tasked with the offsetting of the secretion of adrenaline (epinephrine) and noradrenaline (norepinephrine) on low levels (Gebara et.al., 2016). The stress response system minimizes various processes like sexual responses and digestive systems, to focus on the stressful situation which explains the reactions during an arachnophobia episode when the patient sees a spider (Phillips & Little, 2016). When the person who has arachnophobia sees a spider, they experience a severe anxiety response leading to the high production of adrenalin which is responsible for the overreaction to the stimuli compared to an average person.
Genetics are also responsible for the acquisition of phobias whereby someone inherits arachnophobia from their parents (Ollendick & Muris, 2015). Phobia can also be a result of ancient fear which is seen as an environment of evolutionary adaptation process where people fear things because their ancestors feared them (Wiederhold & Bouchard, 2014). The phobia is therefore as a defense mechanism which explains why human beings naturally become agitated in the presence of creatures that can harm them like spiders a fear stimuli emanating from viewing it as a potential threat rather than a prior source of fear (Mccann et.al., 2014). The theory explains phobias as an exaggerated projection of ancient fears.
Arachnophobia is treated using different methods (Ollendick & Muris, 2015). Cognitive behavior therapy is one form of treatment, and it identifies the connections between thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The psychologist uses this analysis to help the person who has arachnophobia to develop practical skills to manage any patterns that might be causing the phobia episodes (Wiederhold & Bouchard, 2014). Exposure therapy is aimed at helping the patient control their response to spiders by exposing them to spiders gradually and repeatedly (Mccann et.al., 2014). As the patient sees the spider in varying durations and different settings, they adjust their response to them and eventually conquer the excessive fear. There are also medications that can be prescribed which include sedatives and beta blockers. The beta blockers reduce the effect of adrenaline while sedatives calm the patient down and reduce anxiety (Gebara et.al., 2016). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are also prescribed as antidepressants to help the patient cope with the effects of the arachnophobia.
References
Gebara, C. M., Barros-Neto, T. P., Gertsenchtein, L., & Lotufo-Neto, F. (2016). Virtual reality exposure using three-dimensional images for the treatment of social phobia Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria, 38 (1), 24-29. doi:10.1590/1516-4446-2014-1560
Mccann, R. A., Armstrong, C. M., Skopp, N. A., Edwards-Stewart, A., Smolenski, D. J., June, J. D., . . . Reger, G. M. (2014). Virtual reality exposure therapy for the treatment of anxiety disorders: An evaluation of research quality: Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 28 (6), 625- 631. doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2014.05.010
Ollendick, T. H., & Muris, P. (2015). The Scientific Legacy of Little Hans and Little Albert: Future Directions for Research on Specific Phobias in Youth. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 44 (4), 689-706. doi:10.1080/15374416.2015.1020543
Phillips, B., & Little, D. (2016). Fatal arachnophobia. Pathology, 48 . doi:10.1016/j.pathol.2015.12.263
Wiederhold, B. K., & Bouchard, S. (2014). Arachnophobia and Fear of Other Insects: Efficacy and Lessons Learned from Treatment Process: Advances in Virtual Reality and Anxiety Disorders, 91-117. doi:10.1007/978-1-4899-8023-6_5
