ArticleScientific reports2021
Emotions triggered by live arthropods shed light on spider phobia.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Predictive and Adaptive Virtual Exposure Framework for Spider Fear: A Multimodal VR-Based Behavioral Intervention.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Why Are Some Snakes More Terrifying and What Is Behind the Fear?Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- The fear of spiders: perceptual features assessed in augmented reality.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- The influence of spider news on online information-seeking.PloS one · 2024Article
- Attentional, emotional, and behavioral response toward spiders, scorpions, crabs, and snakes provides no evidence for generalized fear between spiders and scorpions.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Animals evoking fear in the Cradle of Humankind: snakes, scorpions, and large carnivores.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2023Article
- Toward a reliable detection of arachnophobia: subjective, behavioral, and neurophysiological measures of fear response.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Do Spiders Ride on the Fear of Scorpions? A Cross-Cultural Eye Tracking Study.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- An expert-curated global database of online newspaper articles on spiders and spider bites.Scientific data · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Spiders are mostly harmless, yet they often trigger high levels of both fear and disgust, and arachnophobia (the phobia of spiders) ranks among the most common specific animal phobias. To investigate this apparent paradox, we turned to the only close relatives of spiders that pose a real danger to humans: scorpions. We adopted a unique methodology in order to assess authentic emotions elicited by arthropods. Over 300 respondents were asked to rate live specimens of 62 arthropod species (including spiders, scorpions, cockroaches, and other insects) based on perceived fear, disgust, and beauty. We found that species' scores on all three scales depended on the higher taxon as well as on body size. Spiders, scorpions, and other arachnids scored the highest in fear and disgust, while beetles and crabs scored the highest in beauty. Moreover, all chelicerates were perceived as one cohesive group, distinct from other arthropods, such as insects or crabs. Based on these results, we hypothesize that the fear of spiders might be triggered by a generalized fear of chelicerates, with scorpions being the original stimulus that signals danger.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.