Nesse, psychiatrist Isaac Marks, and evolutionary biologist George C. Williams have noted that people with systematically deficient responses to various adaptive phobias (e.g. arachnophobia, ophidiophobia, basophobia) are more temperamentally careless and more likely to receive unintentional injuries that are potentially fatal and have proposed that such deficient phobia should be classified as "hypophobia" due to its selfish genetic consequences.A 2001 study found that people could detect images of spiders among images of flowers and mushrooms more quickly than they could detect images of flowers or mushrooms among images of spiders. The researchers suggested that this was because fast response to spiders was more relevant to human evolution. Cultural
An alternative view is that the dangers, such as from spiders, are overrated and not sufficient to influence evolution. Instead, inheriting phobias would have restrictive and debilitating effects upon survival, rather than being an aid. For some communities such as in Papua New Guinea and Cambodia spiders are included in traditional foods. This suggests arachnophobia may, at least in part, be a cultural, rather than genetic trait.Stories about spiders in the media often contain errors and use sensationalistic vocabulary, which could contribute to the fear of spiders. Treatments
The fear of spiders can be treated by any of the general techniques suggested for specific phobias. The first line of treatment is systematic desensitization – also known as exposure therapy. Before engaging in systematic desensitization, it is common to train the individual with arachnophobia in relaxation techniques, which will help keep the patient calm.
Systematic desensitization can be done in vivo (with live spiders) or by getting the individual to imagine situations involving spiders, then modelling interaction with spiders for the person affected and eventually interacting with real spiders. This technique can be effective in just one session, although it generally takes more time.Recent advances in technology have enabled the use of virtual or augmented reality spiders for use in therapy. These techniques have proven to be effective. It has been suggested that exposure to short clips from the Spider-Man movies may help to reduce an individuals arachnophobia. Epidemiology
Arachnophobia affects 3.5 to 6.1 percent of the global population. See also
Apiphobia, fear of bees
Entomophobia, fear of insects
Myrmecophobia, fear of ants

References
External links
Stiemerling, D. (1973). "Analysis of a spider and monster phobia". Z Psychosom Med Psychoanal (in German). 19 (4): 327–45. PMID 4129447. National Geographic: "Fear of Snakes, Spiders Rooted in Evolution, Study Finds"