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"That Spider's Ugly": Being Negative Helps PeopleOvercome PhobiasDescribing fear in a negative way can lower anxiety and improve response to phobias, a new study

says.

Tags fear, spiders, phobia

Describing fear in a negative way can lower anxiety and improve response to fear, a new study

says.

Researchers from University of California, Los

Angeles recruited some 88 people for the study.

All participants were afraid of spiders.

Researchers asked participants to approach a

tarantula and touch it if they can. The participants

were then divided into four groups. All the

participants were made to sit in front of a

tarantula in a container.

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Participants in the first group were asked to

describe their fear about the spider like "I'm

anxious and frightened by the ugly, terrifying

spider." The second group was asked to describe

the fear in more neutral terms like "That little

spider can't hurt me; I'm not afraid of it." The

third group was asked to describe about some

other irrelevant topic while the fourth group

wasn't asked to talk about the spider, rather they

were asked to touch it.

Researchers found that the first group did better

than the rest of the groups in approaching the

spider after a few sessions.

"When spider-phobics say, 'I'm terrified of that nasty spider,' they're not learning something

new; that's exactly what they were feeling - but now instead of just feeling it, they're saying it.

For some reason that we don't fully understand, that transition is enough to make a

difference," said study Matthew Lieberman, a UCLA professor of psychology and of psychiatry

and biobehavioral sciences, co-author in a press release.

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Researchers also found that people who used more negative words to describe their feeling

were far better in facing their fear than people who used neutral or positive words.

"Be in the moment and allow yourself to experience whatever you're experiencing," said

Michelle Craske, a professor of psychology at UCLA and the senior author of the study.

In a similar research article, researchers had said that putting feelings in words (affect

labelling) increases activity in right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (RVLPFC) that further

decreases activity in amygdala, a region of brain associated with fear and aggression.

The present study was published in the journal Psychological Science.

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