• Question: How do we get scared, especially of spiders!?

    Asked by hannahjanehunt to Antonia, Douglas, Hugh, Matt, Tom on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Antonia Hamilton

      Antonia Hamilton answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      there are 3 ways to become afraid of things. one is to be born with the fear. for example, we might be born afraid of snakes and spiders because it was important to avoid them when people evolved on the savannah. the second is to learn from a bad experience, so if another person bullies and hits you, you might be afraid of them. and the third is to learn from watching other people, so if as a child you see other people are all scared of spiders, you learn to fear them too. and that is useful because it saves you from having to get hurt yourself to learn. It is easier to fear some things (like spiders) than others (like baby rabbits) but people can get scared of anything.

    • Photo: Matthew Hurley

      Matthew Hurley answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      I suppose we get scared because our ancestors learnt that some of these spiders can bite (therefore this is a useful thing to learn!). This must have been passed on from parent to child and so on. Perhaps by evolution, or perhaps just because seeing you mum jump out of her wits at a spider is enough to make you do that yourself?

    • Photo: Tom Hardy

      Tom Hardy answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Being scared is how we relate to the fear of something. Fear is a built in survival trait that is programmed into our genetic make-up. I guess we get scared because we are human and have emotions and views on things. Spiders can be harful so some people are scared of them because of that, others just don’t like them because they look creepy. It depends on your personal experiences, if you had had a pet spider from an early age you would have grown up to like them. Bad experiences as a child have a big affect on how we fear things. My friend was kicked by a horse as a child and is now very scared of them!

    • Photo: Douglas Blane

      Douglas Blane answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      We’re the sons and daughters of millions of ancestors who were all great at one thing – not getting killed and eaten. At least not until they’d had kids.

      So we’ve all inherited lots of things that help keep us alive. Fear is one of them.

      Being scared of a lion on the African plains and staying well away from it is a good idea. Same with a big man waving a club – get out of there, your body tells you, and it’s right.

      But because we’ve got nervous systems that are pretty nervous, sometimes they get nervous about stuff they don’t need to.

      When that happens it’s called a phobia. Difference between a phobia and an ordinary fear is that a phobia makes you very scared of something that seems pretty harmless to most people.

      Now spiders are only pretty harmless in this country. Lots of other places have spiders that can give people nasty, and sometimes fatal, poisonous bites. So I’m not sure I’d call fear of spiders a phobia.

      Phobias can come from association in your brain with something really scary that happened in your past.

      I got to tell you a really big spider running across my living room, which happens sometimes, scares the life out of me. Call me a woose if you like.

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