I am mostly excited for new gym leader designs = more fan art

Nintendo suing people for stealing their concepts and ‘creative property’ but what is there to steal anymore…

Amazing!! Thank you!!!

Would it be possible to order a print of this from you? :-)

I study this species and I think my advisor would like this as well!

Teaching people about spiders is a great way to reduce fear! You're a good friend!

Phobia, in the clinical sense, usually means requiring clinical intervention, daily life is impacted, and/or quality of life is lowered/negatively impacted by the phobia. I always view a lot of papers on phobias w caution because sometimes they don't make the distinction.

P.S. if you read papers on arachnophobia or any phobia, check if the paper is discussing a clinical phobia or more general fear. Phobia is typically designated to a disorder that requires clinical intervention but can also mean things like "irrational and/or excessive response."

This list is largely papers I find the most interesting/informative and is obviously not exhaustive. If other people have more they want to share, please do! I hope people enjoy them and ask more questions about what it means to be afraid of spiders and how to eliminate fear and phobia!

Hinze et al. 2021 | Spider Phobia: Neural Networks Informing Diagnosis and (Virtual/Augmented Reality-Based) Cognitive Behavioral Psychotherapy—A Narrative Review

Funky stuff happens in the brain when you're scared of spiders. VR might help!

www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...

Pace-Schott et al. 2012 | Sleep promotes consolidation and generalization of extinction learning in simulated exposure therapy for spider fear

Take a nice nap after learning about spiders. :-)

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22578824/

Zvaríková et al. 2021 | What Makes Spiders Frightening and Disgusting to People?

Let's manipulate pictures of spiders and ask people why they're afraid of the picture so we can make the scariest spider picture possible (I made that last part up)

www.frontiersin.org/journals/eco...

Mammola et al. 2022 | The global spread of misinformation on spiders

SO many amazing arachnologists contributed to this paper on modern *GLOBAL* depictions of spiders in online newspaper articles. 47% of articles contained errors and 43% were sensationalist.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Cavell 2018 | Arachnophobia and Early English Literature

Many great examples of depictions of spiders across time in English lit. My favorite is the idea of how spiders went from an notion of artistry (e.g. weavers, architects) to disgust.

pure-oai.bham.ac.uk/ws/portalfil...

Rakison 2009 | Does women's greater fear of snakes and spiders originate in infancy?

A lot to chew on or this one. Female infants habituated faster to negative emoticons paired with spiders faster than male infants.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

1. Gerdes et al 2009 | Spiders are special: fear and disgust evoked by pictures of arthropods

Love this one a lot. Participants rated images of arthropods. Spiders elicit significantly more fear and disgust than other arthropods in this study.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

YES PLEASE!!!

Literally one of the first places I want to go when I return from Korea.