Psychologists have made people look at spiders. Here’s what happened

People really aren’t fans of spiders, and will look away from just about anything else if they have the option—even another arachnid. As long as it doesn’t have hair.

There are many studies that have looked at why humans are so programmed to hate spiders.

However, few researchers have devoted time to studying how far we are willing to go to avoid even looking for them. Recently, a team of psychologists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in the USA, decided to find out.

The results, recently published in the journal Frontiers in Arachnid Scienceindicate that people will look at practically anything else other than a spider, if you have the option—even if it’s another arachnid.

But before they could analyze anything, researchers needed volunteers. They recruited almost 120 brave participants to observe 13 sets of side by side images of several spidersinsects, scorpions and other arthropods, says .

For example, one of the pairs had a spider next to a butterflywhile another showed a scorpion next to another arachnid. Eye tracking cameras then recorded their focus points for a given period of time before moving on to the next set of images.

Finally, study volunteers completed a brief questionnaire to assess their general attitude towards spidersincluding any strong feelings of arachnophobia.

The authors evaluated 4 metrics tracking: how much time passed on each image (dwell time); how long was initially fixed on a specific detail of the photograph (dwell time of the first observation); the time before looking away from another element (first fixation time); and how often you looked at an image again (observation count).

The results? People Really Aren’t Fans of Spiders.

“Our findings suggest that people generally avoid images of spiders in the presence of other arthropod images other than spiders, and avoid images of scorpions in the presence of images of arachnids other than scorpions,” the study authors wrote.

“Across all metrics, there was a tendency to record longer first fix times, shorter dwell times and lower observation counts in relation to images of spiders”, they add.

At the same time, not all spiders (or parts of spiders) provoke the same disgust. Among the photographic selections were sets that compared specific anatomical attributes of arachnidssuch as eggs, prey, webs and fur. As in previous investigations, people often prefer their spiders relatively hairless.

“If these characteristics can also be considered scary or disgusting… individuals should be more likely to avoid images of spiders with these additional characteristics”, suggest the study authors.

“This pattern is precisely what we find in hairy spiderswhich generally received less attention and a slower first fixation time compared to non-hairy spiders”, they add.

However, the authors were surprised by other results of the data. Participants often seemed look at details that could suggest the presence of spidersno plural.

This contradicted their initial predictions. Scientists suggest this may simply be related to the number of additional image factors that arouse interest, or with a propensity to assume that objects like webs and eggs indicate calmer spiders instead of faster arachnidss, more abrupt or otherwise unpredictable.

Example of image pairs used during the study – (A) spider versus butterfly, (B) spider versus insect, (C) spider eyes versus insect eyes, (D) spider versus non-spider arachnid and (E) spider versus myriapod. A pair of images (F) of scorpion versus non-scorpion arachnid served to obtain information about whether participants respond differently to spiders versus scorpions (e.g., d vs. f).

Although participants were not thrilled with the sight of most spiders, some species received at least some sympathy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these were arachnids that humans usually anthropomorphism more than their relatives.

Smaller jumping spiders with bigger eyes frequently generate more reactions of tenderness than of disgustprobably because they have two larger eyes, more similar to humans.

“When images of spiders are the only option to observethere appears to be a greater tendency towards the most similar arachnid with the human being. Furthermore, colorful jumping spiders were more favored over common jumping spiders across all measures, likely due to a combination of anthropomorphization and color salience in guiding attention,” the authors wrote.

In addition to repulsing volunteers, the results of the study may have real benefits in several areas.

Studying spider traits that “elicit engagement rather than avoidance” could help improve detection efforts. scientific communicationconservation projects and even treatments for intervention in phobias.

However, even if they repulse or scare you, don’t forget the entomologists’ advice: the next time you find a spider inside your home, perhaps it’s for the best. There is no reason to fear them, and they can even be quite useful to us.