Arachnophobia Research Paper

Dissecting the Presence of Arachnophobia in Northern Kentucky

Although Spiders provide a plethora of benefits to our community, they continue to be one of the most feared insects not only in the Northern Kentuckian area but also throughout the world. In this project, I will come to a conclusion on why people generally fear spiders, which is an actual diagnosis called arachnophobia. Arachnophobia can be triggered by the mere thought of a spider or even by a picture of a spider in some cases. Some people with arachnophobia will, upon entering a room, search it for a spider. If they find a spider, they will monitor its progress very thoroughly. Often the fear is caused by having an unwanted encounter with a spider earlier in life, such as their childhood. One of the more effective and

widely used treatments for arachnophobia is exposure therapy.

Exposure therapy is based on the idea that a person with arachnophobia believes something catastrophic will happen when they are confronted by a spider, but because they choose to avoid contact with spiders they are never given the opportunity to have a good encounter with spiders. Exposure therapy requires the person to confront the spider in order to grasp that the threat level of a spider is not as big as they once believed. According to the American Psychiatric Association, phobias affect more than one in ten people in the US today. To gather more information concerning arachnophobia and the fear of spiders in our area, I attained a substantial amount of opinions from Northern Kentuckians in the Alexandria area. I asked locals why they might like/dislike spiders and used their words in whole to form an educated and knowledgeable reflection towards the conclusion of my project. I also advanced the interviewing process by providing them with an optional survey, so I could attain as much information I possibly could. One of the many Northern Kentuckians I interviewed on arachnophobia was David Thompson. David

Thompson grew up around Alexandria, Kentucky and is one of 11 children. He continued to tell me how he used to fear spiders growing up because of an encounter with one in grade school. His exact words were “I remember when I was in around grade school there was a spider in my school’s gymnasium. I was shooting basketball with my friends and all of a sudden, my friend Tommy told me there’s something on my arm. I just remember running around the gym at that point almost scared for my life from that little spider. That event most likely is the reason why I had developed a hate relationship with spiders.” To conclude, I asked if he still finds spiders somewhat scary and his response was “Honestly I don’t find spiders scary anymore because after I had a child of my own I felt like I had to be the father figure and protect the house from things like spiders. Whenever my wife or child discovers a spider, I’m always the one called to come take care of it. So, to summarize my answer I believe having my children drastically changed my phobia of spiders. My next goal was to determine if people knew the benefits that spiders give to our community on a daily basis. This is an important question to ask because if you don’t know that spiders help your community, you’d be more inclined to kill it or have a negative attitude about it. Most of the people I interviewed randomly knew basic things like spiders help to eliminate and control the population of unwanted insects in the community, but the results were shocking when I realized that’s one of the only benefits people know about spiders.