September 3, 200916 yr Are women born to be more scared of spiders than men? By David Derbyshire Last updated at 10:50 AM on 03rd September 2009 Comments (20) Add to My Stories Scary: Women are more likely to associate spiders with fear than men Perhaps men who are constantly called to the bathroom to get rid of spiders shouldn’t be too hard on their wives or girlfriends after all. Research suggests that women may be ‘programmed’ to be more scared of creepy crawlies than men. Girls as young as 11 months learn to associate pictures of spiders with images of fearful faces more quickly than boys of the same age, a study found. Millions of years of evolution has made women more cautious about potentially dangerous animals, according to the academic who made the discovery. Dr David Rakison of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, showed ten girls and ten boys a colour image of spider next to a fearful cartoon face while they sat on a parent’s lap, New Scientist reports today. The pairing was designed to teach them that spiders were frightening. He then showed them two further images – a spider next to a happy face and a flower alongside a scared face. The girls looked at the happy face image for significantly longer than the scared one – evidence, Dr Rakison claims, that they expected spiders to be associated with fear. The happy image was strange to them and they were distrustful of it, expecting the spider to be paired with a fearful face. The boys looked at both sets of images for exactly the same length of time. Dr Rakison said this meant they had not yet learned to associate spiders with fear. ‘The experiments show that female 11-month-olds – but not males of the same age – learn the relation between a negative facial expression and fear-relevant stimuli such as snakes and spiders,’ Dr Rakison reported in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. He said that because a woman can have only a relatively small number of offspring compared to a man – and is often the primary carer for children during the first years of life – it made evolutionary sense to be more weary about venomous snakes and spiders. ‘This may have been because they would likely have encountered them often during foraging and gathering and because of the potential cost to themselves and their offspring,’ he said. ‘There would also have been less selection pressure for men to avoid these threats because of the need for risk-taking behaviour such as hunting.’ About six per cent of the population are frightened of snakes while nearly four per cent have a spider phobia, Dr Rakison added. Past studies have shown that women are four times more likely than men to fear spiders, snakes and other creepy crawlies. However, they are no more scared of flying, heights or injections than their male counterparts. Dr Rakison is not the only researcher to claim that women are inherently more scared of dangerous animals. But others say the behaviour is simply copied from mothers, sisters and grandmothers. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1210748/Are-women-born-scared-spiders-men.html#ixzz0Q39fRzEG
September 3, 200916 yr Author not necessarily. wooot. first response by me Is that all you have to say on the subject?:dozey: Are you scared of creepy-crawlies??:rolleyes:
September 3, 200916 yr I am so freaking scared of spiders, I guess I now know why :rolleyes: :lol: At least i have my friend to save me from them,..oh wait..He is just as scared of them :dozey:
September 3, 200916 yr I HATE HATE HATE and im actually terrified of them. Like that pic up top, thats fucking gross. Its on her face, I wouldnt be able to do that!
September 3, 200916 yr Author I HATE HATE HATE and im actually terrified of them. Like that pic up top, the fucking gross. Its on her face, I wouldnt be able to do that! Are you a girl??:P
September 3, 200916 yr actually i guess everyone's terrified of them, they are just EEEEEEEWWWWWW !! :D i really hate them and whenever i see one i start screaming my head off !!
September 3, 200916 yr Author ^ You don´t have to be a girl to be terrified of spiders :thinking: But it helps!!:P
September 3, 200916 yr I'm more afraid of a large spider than I am of a gun. And I'm a dude. But if I kill a spider, I get this sense of satisfaction followed by a temporary feeling of guilt because I just murdered a conscious creature that was only going about its business... pass the Jim Beam, dammit. *sob*
September 3, 200916 yr Are you a girl??:P Ha ha! :rolleyes: I'm more afraid of a large spider than I am of a gun. And I'm a dude. But if I kill a spider, I get this sense of satisfaction followed by a temporary feeling of guilt because I just murdered a conscious creature that was only going about its business... pass the Jim Beam, dammit. *sob* Haha! Im right there with you...I mean with the whole larger spider gun thing. As for feeling bad about killing them...not so much! :uhoh: :P
September 3, 200916 yr I use a "dustbuster" to take out spiders, then I don't have to touch them. I hate things that fly more though.
September 3, 200916 yr I just hate bugs, spiders whatever it may be. It's kinda sad I am scared of butterflies ....:embarassed:
September 3, 200916 yr Didn't we already know this??? I'm not afraid of spiders by the way...at all. Snakes are what get me.
September 3, 200916 yr Author Didn't we already know this??? I'm not afraid of spiders by the way...at all. Snakes are what get me. They get you?? How often??:stunned:
September 3, 200916 yr I hate things that fly more though. Same here. I don't like spiders but they don't really scare me.
September 3, 200916 yr Spiders don't really scare me too. It's cockroaches that get me :( Bees, however, can scare me stiff sometimes as well. But I don't mind them as much.
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