German researchers found that exposure to spiders also reduced fear of heights.
- Exposure therapy involves helping patients overcome their fear by confronting them with frightening situations under psychotherapeutic supervision.
- In the study, although exposure therapy only targeted fear of spiders, fear of heights was also reduced in the process.
- For now, the authors still did not know exactly how the effect of the therapy was transmitted from one fear to another.
“People suffering from one phobia often develop another later. The most effective treatment method is exposure: by confronting frightening situations or stimuli under psychotherapeutic supervision, patients learn to overcome their fear. ( …) It has long been assumed that if a person has multiple phobias, they would need exposure therapies tailored to each fear.” has explained Iris Kodzaga, psychologist at the Ruhr University in Bochum (Germany). However, the specialist and her team have recently questioned this hypothesis.
Arachnophobia, acrophobia: 24 patients benefited from exposure therapy
In a study, published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, researchers examined whether generalization of exposure therapy can be achieved for untreated stimuli that share no perceptual resemblance and belong to a different phobia category. For this, they recruited 50 adults afraid of spiders and heights.
In one experiment, 24 people received exposure therapy, designed solely to target fear of spiders, and 26 volunteers did not benefit. Additionally, the authors collected quantitative behavioral measures, such as how close participants dared to approach spiders or how far they could climb up to a church steeple.
Exposure therapy reduced both fear of spiders and heights
According to the results, exposure therapy for arachnophobia not only reduced fear of spiders, but also decreased fear of heights by 15% on average. According to Iris Kodzaga, this discovery “opens new perspectives for effective treatment of phobias. This could mean that we can rethink treatment approaches and possibly develop more universal methods.”
In the work, the team clarified that they still don’t know exactly how the effect of exposure therapy transfers from one fear to another. “It cannot be fully explained by associative learning processes. The effect could be due to increased self-efficacy due to exposure therapy. But perhaps there is also a common denominator between the fear of spiders and fear of heights, which is not obvious. We will need to conduct follow-up studies to find out more,” concluded the psychologist.
