A little while ago, I wrote a piece, ‘Innate’ fear of snakes?, in which I took issue with a University of Virginia study that was described by a science writer (and perhaps by the researchers) as showing that humans have an ‘innate’ fear of snakes. At the time, I argued that what their research had shown was a propensity to pay attention to snake shapes, and not that this was an ‘innate’ fear, for reasons that I banged on about for a fair few words (go to the original if you’re a glutton for snake-related musings).
And now, vindication. Well, as much vindication as you can get considering that psychological research is liable to be undermined by another study in the next few months. According to a posting today on Science Daily, ‘Unlocking The Psychology Of Snake And Spider Phobias,’ researchers at the University of Queensland have tested both snake experts and those who are naive about the creatures to see if there is an innate fear.
In the study, researchers compared the responses to stimuli of participants with no particular experience with snakes and spiders, to that of snake and spider experts.
“Previous research has argued that snakes and spiders attract preferential attention (they capture attention very quickly) and that during this early processing a negative (fear) response is generated… as an implicit and indexed subconscious [action],” Dr [Helena] Purkis said.
“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.”
Neuroanthropology 