Facing your fear of spiders may also help with other phobias, including a fear of heights, according to a new study.
A new paper in the journal Translational Psychiatry reveals that when people with both a fear of spiders and a fear of heights were treated for their arachnophobia, the fear of heights also lessened by 15 percent.
"It was long assumed that if a person had multiple fears, they would require multiple exposure therapies tailored to their specific fear," Iris Kodzaga, lead author of the study and psychotherapy researcher at Ruhr University, said in a statement.
"Our findings provide first evidence for generalization of exposure effects in spider phobia to another perceptually unrelated fear-evoking stimulus category, i.e., height." the authors wrote in the paper.
Exposure therapy works by exposing people to their phobia in a safe environment in a way that gradually decreases avoidance, slowly allowing the patient to overcome their fear.
Previous studies have found that when someone has fears in a similar category, such as spiders and cockroaches, exposure therapy to one can ease the fear of the other.
"Anxiety rarely comes alone," Kodzaga said. "Patients who suffer from one fear often subsequently develop another."
This study shows that fears in totally different categories can also be treated using the same exposure therapies.
The researchers measured the level of fear of both spiders and heights in 50 test subjects before and after they were treated with exposure therapy for their fear of spiders. The level of fear was determined using questionnaire data, as well as qualitative behavioral measures, including how far a person was willing to climb or how close they could approach a spider.
These findings are exciting to psychologists, as they may pave the way to new ways of treating fears.
"The discovery that exposure to spiders also reduces fear of heights opens up new perspectives for the efficient treatment of phobias," said Kodzaga. "It could mean that we can rethink therapeutic approaches and possibly develop more universal methods."
The exact ways that different fears are linked in the mind are unclear, and more research needs to be done to figure out exactly why treatment of a fear of spiders can help with a fear of heights.
"The effect can't be fully explained by associative learning processes. The generalization effect might be due to an increase in self-efficacy as a result of exposure therapy," Kodzaga said. "But perhaps there is also a common denominator between fear of spiders and fear of heights that's not obvious. We'll need to conduct follow-up studies to find out more."
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Jess Thomson is a Newsweek Science Reporter based in London UK. Her focus is reporting on science, technology and healthcare. ... Read more
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