Attentional, emotional, and behavioral response toward spiders, scorpions, crabs, and snakes: Do they all scare us?

Abstract

Abstract Spiders evoke significant fear and disgust in many people; such a complex response has been formed throughout human evolution. However, most spiders do not present a serious threat, so the evolutionary explanation is controversial. We suggest that other chelicerates, e.g., scorpions, might have been important in the formation and fixation of the spider-like category. In this eye-tracking study, we checked for some aspects of the attentional, behavioral, and emotional response to the spider, scorpion, snake, and crab stimuli used as task-irrelevant distractors. Results showed that spider-fearful participants were selectively distracted by spiders, but also by crabs which were not consciously rated as fear-eliciting. We hypothesize that spider-fearful participants might have mistaken crabs for spiders based on their shared physical characteristics. Contrary, participants with no fear of spiders were distracted the most by snakes and scorpions. No difference between snake and scorpion distractors was found supporting the notion that scorpions are also prioritized, evolutionary relevant stimuli. We conclude that scorpions are evolutionary fear-relevant stimuli, however, the generalization between scorpions and spiders was not supported in spider-fearful participants. This result might be important for a better understanding of the evolution of spider phobia.