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RE: New Research
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by richardduckworth on March 1, 2008
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that seems like total BS to me. at 3 years old, if a kid hasn't been told over and over about how horrible snakes are, then they are not going to fear them at all. chances are, even after having "snakes are bad" drilled into their heads, they'll still wanna check them out.
also, at 3 years old, a kid's parents have so heavily influenced them that they're far from "hardwired". i have a 2 year old that is way past that point.
also, this doesn't seem like much of a study. snakes are unique creatures. they mentioned caterpillars like they were comparable but really, most pictures of snakes show them curved or slightly coiled or whatever, whereas a caterpillar doesn't do that. maybe an inchworm comes close, but snakes are unique looking everywhere you look.
just seems ridiculous and like another attack on snakes. seems to be trying to validate an irrational fear. all the folks i know who are scared of snakes were taught to be scared of snakes, and i'm sure a lot more have a horrible experience with them, but i've not met anyone who is scared of snakes without some reason. that goes against an inborn fear theory as well.
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RE: New Research
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by snakeguy101 on March 2, 2008
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At the museum it is always funny to watch a big tough guy walk in the naturalist center with his two year old daughter. as soon as they spot the snake i am holding, almost inevitably, the daughter wants to pet it as the father keeps a good ten feet between the snake and himself. if this is not proof of the fear being nurture as opposed to nature, i don't know what is.
~Chris~
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RE: New Research
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by Cro on March 2, 2008
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I think a lot of fear of snakes is caused by contitioning of kids when they are really young.
If you go to any park, you will hear folks the kids respect like parents or grandparnets holler out things like "stay out of that tall grass, there might be snakes in there," or "keep away from that rock wall, it looks snakey." These types of warnings create a phobia at a young age that the kid does not even remember as he gets older.
I also believe that it is possible that there is some sort of genetic inborn ability to recognise certain dangers, like the fear of falling off a high place, that keeps kids from running off of cliffs. It is possible, and probable, that recognition of snakes is hardwired somewhat into the brain, and I believe that that has been proven in primate studies. Wether that hardwired ability to recognize a snake like form becomes fear or fasination is probably somewhat a conditioned response that makes some of us herpers.
Perhaps all herpers share a gene mutation that causes a natural fear response to be replaced with something that is 180 degrees opposite ?
Resently, I had an interesting opportunity concerning fear of snakes. A long time friend was showing a corn snake to two little girls aged 5 and 8. The girls were fasinated by it, as they had been brought up by parents who are teachers and herpers, and the girls had absolutly no fear of the corn snake. But a neighbor kid who is aged 13 was there also, and he was so scared of the corn snake that he was actually trembling while standing 20 feet away from it. I know that his fear has been conditioned by his mom and his dad who both are terrified of snakes and are both very over protective and over reactive. I could not stand the idea that a 13 year old boy was contitioned that much to fear snakes. And I did not like the idea that he should carry that fear through his life. So I kind of drug him over to the corn snake and told him you are 13 years old, and you do not have to have this kind of fear of snakes all of your life. I told him it was time to get over his fear of snakes. His mom would probably had a coniption fit, as she is so over-reactive about everything. He wound up actually touching the corn snake, shaking all the while, but still, he dealt with his fear. I took a bit of risk in pushing him that way a bit, but now he has changed his attitude toward snakes, and has realised that snakes are not the beast that he had been conditioned to fear. He will never be a herper, but the "shock" thearpy seems to have caused him to loose his phobia of snakes, and he now does not go into incontrolled trembling in fear when he sees a snake in the wild, or goes through a reptile exhibit at a zoo. This could save the lives of the many snakes he will encounter over the years, and it makes him a better adapted and less fearfull person. Would I suggest this as a standard practice for others who have a great fear of snakes ? No. Would I say that this helped in this case with a particular person and his fear, yes it did help.
Best Regards JohnZ
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RE: New Research
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by earthguy on March 3, 2008
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What they failed to realize is that there is a difference between recognition and fear. My guess is that all of the test subjects would have been able to recognize the dollar bill on the screen before they recognized the snakes. Does that mean that people are afraid of money? I think probably a little bit of researcher bias entered into those results. I hate to be critical of a paper that I haven't yet read, but I have seen similar studies with similar results that were interpreted differently. Did snakes offer an evolutionary force to Homo sapiens? Probably. Does that mean that we are hard-wired to fear them? Probably not.
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