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Growing up with Arachnophobia: Helping Adults Through Outreach

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Growing up with Arachnophobia: Helping Adults Through Outreach Growing Up With Arachnophobia: Helping Adults Through Outreach Winnifred Wolfe Introduction I conducted this study because I wanted to know more about the root cause of adult arachnophobia. I was hoping to find out more about where and why the fear started so I could try to help adults overcome fear. This research has taught me a lot about arachnophobia because I now know common reactions adults have near spiders. The reason I focused on working with adults is because as people grow up their fears start to grow as well whereas when people are little they do not know to fear spiders. It is my hope that through my results I can learn more about adults reactions to spiders and can help them face and overcome their fear. Literature Review I looked through various articles about helping people with arachnophobia. Bouchard et al said that using virtual reality helps people with their fears. This article also said that arachnophobia was the most common complaint. The treatment in the “Effectiveness of Virtual Reality”study helps recreate situations virtually that would be hard to remake in real life and can also let the therapist watch the participant interact with their fear. Eleven people did this treatment, ten females and one male. All of the patients’ phobia started when they were little. They did five sessions a week for ninety minutes. These patients were all eighteen and older. No huge difference was noted after the patients went through the treatment. Later, Shahriari-Namadi et al discussed how females are more likely to experience phobic disorder than males. This could be due to the rates for phobia treatment in males and the different ones in females. Females usually have a larger fear for animals then males. This agrees with an earlier German study that found the fear of animals for females is three times higher then one for males. Furthermore, this study includes the idea that during teenage years a female’s phobias grow faster than their male peers. Plasencia and Escobar-Sanchez preformed a treatment specific to arachnophobia. Participants first watched a static spider then a moving spider, then several moving spiders, and last many moving spiders. The treatment had sixteen people and nine of them made an improvement on their anxiety. This method was similar to the other articles on the use of virtual reality in treating phobias. But the most interesting study for me was not related to arachnophobia. Rather Wiederhold and Bouchard focused on katsaridaphobia, or fear of cockroaches. A treatment for this fear will have people interact with roaches on a screen while trying to finish a puzzle. They called it the cockroach game and will have patients play it for an hour for nine days. Currently, are having non-phobic people test it. This shows that there are many different ways to handle phobias. My research expands on this because I do videos with my spiders that are posted regularly on my website. This creates a safe barrier for those that are afraid while exposing them to what they fear. Adults can learn about spiders while maintaining a safe distance from them. Methodology I interviewed thirty-nine people through a Google Form. Thirty-six people had valid responses. Participants volunteered and answered three questions about their fear. Each participant had to have a Google account which may have decreased the number of possible participants. I reached out to people to participate through Facebook and outreach events where I showed my spiders. Results A lot of adults had no known cause as to how their fear started. Very few participants said they were afraid to get bit, heard about a bite story, or are scared because of an unrelated event. A couple of them said they either saw or held a spider and got scared or are afraid because they watched a movie. More participants said no than yes when asked if they had ever been bitten. The people who said yes replied with reported symptoms such as itchiness, soreness, swelling, oozing, a welt, or a puncture wound. One person even said their bite looked like a mosquito bite. A lot of reported symptoms appeared to be more like any insect bite rather than a spider bite. Most participants said that when they see a spider they kill it. The least participants said they just observe the spiders. A couple of participants said they panic and others said they would have someone else take care of it. More people said they would leave it alone, run away, or put it outside. Often their actions depend on whether the spider is outside or in their house and how close in proximity they are to the spider. Discussion I have learned that a lot of adults do not like spiders and seeing one can often result in killing it. I plan to use this data to try to convince people that beauty is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to these eight legged beauties through outreach specifically geared towards adults. I want to get a message out that these creatures are way beyond their look and that they are nature’s exterminators. I would like to learn more about helping adult’s fear in the future and I would like to do workshops for adults where I bring my spiders in and tell them why these creatures should not be feared. I will use my website to reach out to people about my message to help people with their arachnophobia. I plan to use positive information about spiders in videos on my website to help people with their fear. Conclusion My research will help me outreach adults in my programs using real spiders and gets me closer to reaching more people with my message. I hope I can change adult’s perspectives about spiders. I have learned that adults tend to have more fear towards spiders then kids. My research will help future studies because I have learned more about adult’s reactions when interacting with a spider. Acknowledgements I would like to thank... The participants of my survey for providing me with information that will help me in the future. Dr. Jennifer Maupin for helping me sprout ideas for this paper. Bob Grant for supporting me and my message. Brenda Bowen for sticking by my side even if she as an arachnophobe. Stephanie Dole for being a good friend and supporting me no matter what. My mom [my promoter] for her help and support! This would not be happening without her! Works Cited Cote, S., & Bouchard, S. (2005). Cognitive mechanisms underlying virtual reality exposures efficacy in the treatment of arachnophobia. PsycEXTRA Dataset. doi:10.1037/e705572011-022 Granado, L. C., Ranvaud, R., & Peláez, J. R. (2007). A Spiderless Arachnophobia Therapy: Comparison between Placebo and Treatment Groups and Six-Month Follow-Up Study. Neural Plasticity,2007, 1-11. doi:10.1155/2007/10241 Plasencia, A. R., & Escobar-Sánchez, M. E. (2018). Interactive multiplatform software to mitigate arachnophobia through augmented reality. KnE Engineering,1(2), 108. doi:10.18502/keg.v1i2.1489 Shahriari-Namadi, M., Tabatabaei, H. R., & Soltani, A. (2018). Entomophobia and Arachnophobia Among School-Age Children: A Psychological Approach. Shiraz E-Medical Journal,In Press(In Press). doi:10.5812/semj.64824 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 .
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