It’s a long-held assumption that humans harbor an innate fear of snakes and spiders as an evolutionary defense mechanism against the threats such creepy crawlies may pose. Moreover, recent studies have suggested that we possess an uncanny natural capacity to preferentially attend to—i.e. identify—bite-happy beasties so as to give them the wide berths we presume they warrant.
However, researchers at the University of Queensland posit that just because we notice potential dangers, doesn’t necessarily mean we fear them. Quoth Dr. Helena Purkis:
“We showed that although everyone preferentially attends to snakes or spiders in the environment as they are potentially dangerous, only inexperienced participants display a negative response.
“If we understand the relationship between preferential attention and emotion it will help us understand how a stimulus goes from being perceived as potentially dangerous, to eliciting an emotional response and to being associated with phobia."
At the heart of the study is the question of fear: its emotional and cognitive origins, how it’s acquired and perpetuated. And to a further extent, its usefulness. On that subject, Dr. Purkis says something rather curious:
“[This] could give us some information about the way people need to deal with snakes and spiders in order to minimize negative emotional responses.”
Short of allowing emotional responses to degenerate into heart-stopping, shrieking, jumping-on-your-desk phobias, it seems that a healthy dose of fear is what keeps us from slippery-sloping all the way into a Steve Irwin/Timothy Treadwell style of death-wishing stoicism. Or embracing a life of undismayed mithridatism.
The researchers want to conduct a follow-up study testing the theory that fear (or phobia) comes from the same attention mechanism that governs love. To this end, they seek to determine if, for instance, dog owners have access to preferential attention for canines, and the ensuing emotional responses (in this case love, as opposed to the fear associated with snakes and spiders).
It would be really interesting, I think, to learn what Treadwell’s emotional response would have been toward bears. Would he have shown complete lack of fear as, according to the study, “experienced participants” do? Or, as his actions might suggest, love?
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