The Causes of Fears or Phobias of Snakes Among Miami University Students

This topic submitted by Christen Pantos, Connie Schmerge, Hadley Wagner, Margaret Gragg, Megan Boyer ( pantoscn@muohio.edu, graggme@muohio.edu, schmercm@muohio.edu, boyermj@muohio.edu, wagnerha@muohio.d ) on 10/6/04 .

Natural Systems 1 Syllabus---Western Program---Miami University

Christen, Connie, Hadley, Margaret, Megan
Title:
The Causes of Fears and Phobias of Snakes Among Miami University Students
Intro:
This experiment looks at the causes of snake phobias among Miami University students. These causes will then be further researched to find out the specifics on why a certain thing causes one to have a fear or phobia of a snake.
Stafford discusses the behaviors of snakes when irritated and attacked. This is useful in understanding why people have a fear of snakes. Snakes for the most part try to remain unfound. If they are found the most common reaction is to flee. If a snake does not flee it usually puts on a display or makes sounds to warn the intruder. Snakes only bite if they believe that a predator is assaulting them. After discovering this, it seems very odd that people have fears of snakes. As long as they are left alone, there is really no reason to fear them at all. A snake's first natural reaction is not to bite (Stafford, 2000).
Kleinknecht discusses the causes of fears first by looking at animal, human, environmental, learned, and biological causes. He claims that among animals, the fear of snake is very prevalent among lower primates. Kleinknecht states that this fear is aroused mostly from the characteristics and movement patterns of snakes and caused by the fear of predators (Kleinknecht, 1986, p.58). Humans have no reason to fear snakes because they have no natural predators, yet the fear of snakes is the most prevalent fear among humans (Kleinknecht, 1986, p. 62). Many fears in humans, Kleinknecht claims, come from conditioning when they are young. Fears may be easily learned form parents or other influences in a child's life (Kleinknecht,1986, p.67). These learned fears compliment biological fears of creatures that may have, in the past, been harmful towards the human race. Kleinknecht explains that this is the reason that there is a much greater fear of snakes than of hammers, even though hammers are much more likely to cause a person harm (Kleinknecht, 1986, p. 74). Kleinknecht supports our theory that the fear of snakes may be caused by influential factors such a parents or the media.
The book Facing Fears opens up with general information about fears and phobias. It is stated that people of all ages can develop fears because of traumatic experiences they have been confronted with or witnessed. This part of the introduction lists their found factors that contribute to fears. These factors consisted of major life changes, allergies, sickness, isolation and chemical changes in the human body. Then it proceeds to present statistics of adult fears and phobias (Kahn, 2000, p.4). Each chapter is mainly about different types of snakes and their environments, but a section of this book contains information about people's fear of snakes and a few popular reasons for people's fears including the appearance and the fear of their fangs. In the end of this section it concludes that most people who fear snakes do not have direct contact with snakes (Kahn, 2000, p. 247).
The book Venomous and Poisonous Animals starts out talking about the actual reports of bites versus fatalities and the number of actual deaths in the year of 1979. Overall, there is very minimal amount of five bites that year that ended in death compared to the thousands of people that get bit every year. In a later chapter, it questions the genetic makeup of humans and their snake fright. It states that they have found that if parents are afraid of city traffic and snakes, snakes was the fear that was transferred onto the child. In conclusion of this chapter they suggest that there is some unreasonable fear of venomous animals that could possibly reflect the human genetic makeup (Edstrom, 1992).

Fear of snakes is found in both Humans and monkeys learn snake fear much
easier than fear from most other things. They learn this fear through vicarious or direct conditioning. The coming about of the fear does not require the snakes to be consciously perceived but can occur with masked stimuli. Humans tend to perceive illusory correlations between snakes and other similar stimuli. Thus, snakes in complex visual displays automatically capture their attention. These things help evolve fear in the brain (Ohman et al, 2003) .
Three-hundred and thirty one men and 373 women were surveyed to determine the prevalence rates of phobias for lightning, enclosed spaces, darkness, flying, heights, spiders, snakes, injections, dentists, and injuries. Fear intensity was rated using a visual analog scale with 10.9% of men and 21.2% of women met the criteria for any single phobia. Animal phobia had a prevalence of 12.1% in women and 3.3% in men. Most sex differences regarding phobias are present after puberty (Fredrikson et al, 1996).
Davidson's journal describes society's influences on fears and phobias. Her idea that "societyÉis an active player in shaping, transmitting and transforming individuals' healthy and unhealthy perceptions of the world around them, including their perceptions of the 'natural' world." (pg 645) supports our hypothesis. Society, mostly media, creates a negative image of many creatures in nature. Davidson argues that it is due to society's need to have order and control that nature has been labeled as negative. Because of this Davidson suggests that "Phobias are then socially mediated anxieties." (pg 645). Our hypothesis agrees with Davidson's idea that "Phobias entail an altogether different level of reaction, including convoluted and highly restrictive patterns of avoidance, in an attempt to remain free of the experience of sheer panic that often characterizes confrontation with the phobic object" (pg. 646). Through our experiment, we may find that phobias are "genetically-coded responses to potentially dangerous species/situations Ð snakes or heights are obvious examples. But such explanations are undermined by the fact that fears appear to be culturally induced and culturally reinforced" (pg 647). Davidson's article supports our hypothesis, revealing that phobias of nature are most often created by society, through media (Davidson et al, 2003).
Fredrickson's journal suggests that phobias are genetic, a option that we have place in our experiment. He states, "The development of phobias has been attributed to genetic factors, classical conditioning, social learning experiences, and prepared learning" however, "Family and twin studies suggest that both heritable and environmental factors may be of importance in the development of irrational fears." (pg 23). In a lab conducted by Fredrickson et at found that "Twins show a heritability estimate of 48% for snake fear." (pg. 23). This data shows that the genetics between twins make them more susceptible to having similar phobias. Fredrickson examines the idea of genetic fears, "The increased frequency of snake phobia is parallel to the increased frequency of parental history among snake as compared to spider phobics It could be argued that the increased frequency of indirect aversive exposures in snake as compared to spider phobics reflect indirect social learning experiences associated with the relatively higher prevalence of phobic parents among snake rather than spider phobics." (Fredrickson, et al, 1997, pg 27). Thus, the reason for phobias may be explained through genetics.

One main reason people may have a fear of snakes is because of media. This is supported in Kahn's book Facing Fears when it is stated that most people with a fear of snakes do not have contact with them (Kahn 2000, p 247). There are shows on television and even a few movies dedicated to snakes. In these shows the snakes are portrayed to be very dangerous. Some snake venom can be fatal within seconds, and it is disturbing to think that a small animal lurking in the bushes has this capability (É). Not only can snakes be hiding in bushes and gardens, they can even bury themselves under the ground to wait for prey, or they can play dead (É). Appearance may also be a large factor in phobias. Some people classify snakes as slimy, but really they are not. Snakes have rough scales over their body and clear scales over their eyes. The scales can be smooth or rough depending on the type of snake (É). It is ironic and unfortunate that humans have such severe fears and phobias of snakes when uncontrolled human population growth and its corollaries, habitat alteration and destruction, pollution, pest and predator control, and overexploitation are the main causes for snake population decline (Wilson et al, 2004).
The preceding research have led us to conclude that female phobias of snakes will be prevalent over males, media will be the primary reason, and movies will be the primary type of media which cause the phobias.

Methods:
Phase One:
In order to obtain information on personal phobias, a primary survey was handed out randomly to forty people. These forty people consisted mainly of western campus people. The survey asked simple questions: Do you have a fear or phobia of snakes? If you do have a fear or a phobia, how severe is it on a scale of one to five (one being least severe and five being most severe)? Of the following reasons, what do you think the reason for your fear is: past experience, parents, media, and other (please explain)? Surveys were collected and data was observed.
Phase Two:
To further investigate the data obtained from our primary survey, a series of four in-class experiments were performed. These four experiments were based on the four most popular reasons for a fear or phobia of snakes among students who participated in the primary survey. The first of these experiments focused on media. A movie clip of "Anaconda" was shown to the class. The first clip we show a part of the movie with the background music. Then we will show the same clip without music. The second experiment we will show a clip of the show "Animal Planet" as an education scene with snakes. The third experiment we will show a clip of a music video of Brittany Spears holding a snake. The fourth clip we will show a news broadcast of a true story that happened. This survey asked two questions: Which of the four examples was the most frightening? Which of the four experiments did they think would be most likely create a phobia?

Our Day:
We are planning on using our day to present phase one results as well to further investigate the data obtained from the primary survey. We are using our day as an experimental day in which we will use our classmates as subjects for phase two. In addition to phase two we will be bringing out the snakes after consulting Professor Haynes and presenting them to our classmates to observe their reactions. In order to do this we will divide our time into four thirty minute segments. Each segment will contain a different experiment. These four experiments are referred to earlier in the methods section under phase two.

Time Table:

Dates
Tasks
10/8 First Proposal due
Weeks 10/9 Ð 11/1 -Prepare for phase two
-Find film clips
-Talk to Professor Haynes
-Create reaction worksheets
11/2 Our Day
Weeks 11/3 Ð 12/8 -Process surveys
-Perform additional research if needed
-Perform possible third phase
-Analyze data
-Make conclusions
-Revise proposal

12/9 Final Proposal Due

Results:
Survey on Fear of Snakes
Distributed to ten students living on main campus, twenty students living in Peabody Hall and twenty-one students living in McKee Hall. We were looking at the causes of fears of snakes and how they relate to gender.

FEMALE MALE
Do they have a fear? Yes No Yes No
17 15 6 13
Degree of fear: 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
(1 low, 5 high) 3 2 7 2 3 1 2 1 0 0
Cause of Fear: Experience Parents Media Other Experience Parents Media Other
0 2 13 Appearance: 4 0 0 5 Appearance: 1
Death: 1

Discussion:
After distributing the survey to fifty-one random students, we have concluded that females are much more likely to have a fear of snakes and the media is the main cause of these fears. Fifty-three percent of all females were afraid of snakes. Among these, the average level of fear was a three, exactly in the center of the scale. The males, on the other hand, only had thirty-two percent who were afraid of snakes. The average level of fear among those males who were afraid of snakes was 2, much lower than the average level of females. The only thing that both group had in common was media as the most common cause of fear. These results are very reliable, but may not reflect the society because the samples who small. There was also a much smaller sample of males than females, making the data from them less reliable.

Literature Cited:
Davidson, Joyce, and Mick Smith (2003). Bio-phobias/Techno-philias: virtual reality exposure as treatment for phobias of nature. Sociology of Health & Illness, 25(6), 644-661.

Edstrom, Anders (1992). Venomous and Poisonous Animals. Malabar, FL: Krieger.

Fredrikson, Mats; Annas, Peter; Fischer, Hakan; Wik, Gustav (1996). Gender and age differences in the prevalence of specific fears and phobias. Behaviour Research & Therapy , 34(1), 33-39

Fredrikson, Mats, Peter Annas, and Gustav Wik (1997). Parental History, Aversive Exposure and the Development of Snake and Spider Phobia in Women. Behaviour Research & Therapy, 35(1), 23-28.

Kahn, Adu (2000). Facing Fears. New York, NY: Mason Crest

Kleinknecht, Ronald (1986). The Anxious Self: Diagnosis and Treatment of Fears and
Phobias. New York: Human Sciences Progress.

Ohman, Arne; Mineka, Susan (2003). The malicious serpent: Snakes as a prototypical stimulus for an evolved module of fear. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 12(1), 5-9

Sharon, D. (2003). Snakes. Broomall, PA: Mason Crest.
Stafford, Peter (2000). Snakes. London: The Natural History Museum.
Wilson, L., & McCranie, J. (2004). The conservation status of the herpetofauna of honduras. Amphibian and Reptile Conservation, 1(3), 6-33.

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