Wellness

Afraid of spiders? Here is the solution

AFP
September 10, 2012

First Published: 18:33 IST(10/9/2012)
Last Updated: 00:58 IST(11/9/2012)

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The Amazing Spider-ManThis reboot of the successful Marvel Comics superhero franchise stars Andrew Garfield (The Social Network), replacing Tobey Maguire as a teenage Peter Parker juggling human problems that turn into a crisis when he meets his father's former partner. Emma Stone costars as girlfriend Gwen Stacy and Rhys Ifans as villain The Lizard.Release dates: Worldwide July 3-6

Afraid of, say, spiders? Look the spider in the eye (all eight of them) and tell it you find it
terrifying and even ugly. The result: a freedom from the chains of fear, at least that’s what a new study from scientists at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), says.

“This is

unique because it differs from typical procedures in which the goal is to have people think differently about the experience — to change their emotional experience or change the way they think about it so that it doesn’t make them anxious,” said study co-author Michelle Craske. “There was no attempt to change their experience, just to state what they were experiencing.”

How talking helps:
To reach their findings, Craske and her team took 88 arachnophobes (those who are scared of spiders) and split them into four groups — their first task, to touch a live tarantula in an open container outdoor. After being asked to get as close to it as they could and having their stress responses monitored, the four groups headed indoors for the second phase.

Here, members of the first group were asked to describe their feelings in detail: “I’m anxious and frightened by the ugly,
terrifying spider”. The second group was asked to make a more neutral statement to diffuse the fear, such as, “That little spider can’t hurt me; I’m not afraid of it.” The third group was asked to say something totally irrelevant to the experience, and the fourth group said nothing.

All the participants were re-tested in the outdoor setting one week later and were again asked to cozy up to the tarantula and potentially touch it with a finger.

The conclusion:
the group who expressed their emotional feelings about the spider had better chances of overcoming their fear. The study was recently published in the journal, Psychological Science.