🧵 ARACHNOPHOBIA GREATEST HITS A thread of my favorite arachnophobia papers dedicated to my friends @humanbyweight.bsky.social and @entobiologist.bsky.social, with increasingly unserious character limited summaries. Is this the science version of making somebody a mixtape? Okay, here we go 👇🕷️- 1. Gerdes et al 2009 | Spiders are special: fear and disgust evoked by pictures of arthropods Love this one a lot. Participants rated images of arthropods. Spiders elicit significantly more fear and disgust than other arthropods in this study. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Rakison 2009 | Does women's greater fear of snakes and spiders originate in infancy? A lot to chew on or this one. Female infants habituated faster to negative emoticons paired with spiders faster than male infants. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Oct 10, 2025 06:32
- Cavell 2018 | Arachnophobia and Early English Literature Many great examples of depictions of spiders across time in English lit. My favorite is the idea of how spiders went from an notion of artistry (e.g. weavers, architects) to disgust. pure-oai.bham.ac.uk/ws/portalfil...
- Mammola et al. 2022 | The global spread of misinformation on spiders SO many amazing arachnologists contributed to this paper on modern *GLOBAL* depictions of spiders in online newspaper articles. 47% of articles contained errors and 43% were sensationalist. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Zvaríková et al. 2021 | What Makes Spiders Frightening and Disgusting to People? Let's manipulate pictures of spiders and ask people why they're afraid of the picture so we can make the scariest spider picture possible (I made that last part up) www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...
- Pace-Schott et al. 2012 | Sleep promotes consolidation and generalization of extinction learning in simulated exposure therapy for spider fear Take a nice nap after learning about spiders. :-) pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22578824/
- Hinze et al. 2021 | Spider Phobia: Neural Networks Informing Diagnosis and (Virtual/Augmented Reality-Based) Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy—A Narrative Review Funky stuff happens in the brain when you're scared of spiders. VR might help! www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...
- This list is largely papers I find the most interesting/informative and is obviously not exhaustive. If other people have more they want to share, please do! I hope people enjoy them and ask more questions about what it means to be afraid of spiders and how to eliminate fear and phobia!
- P.S. if you read papers on arachnophobia or any phobia, check if the paper is discussing a clinical phobia or more general fear. Phobia is typically designated to a disorder that requires clinical intervention but can also mean things like "irrational and/or excessive response."
