Cultural depictions of spiders the West", and was remade as a 1967 Hong Kong cinema production. Many horror films have featured the spider, including 1955's "Tarantula", exploiting America's fear of atomic radiation during the nuclear arms race, the 1975 low-budget cult film "The Giant Spider Invasion", and "Kingdom of the Spiders", a 1977 film starring William Shatner, depicting the consequence of hungry spiders deprived of their natural food supply due to pesticides. The fear of spiders culminates in "Arachnophobia", a 1990 movie in which spiders multiply in large numbers. On the other hand, a person who admires spiders is referred to as an "arachnophile";
Fear appeal finding that moderate to high levels of fear are unnecessary in changing intentions. In fact, they argue, what is important is the ratio of these to each other. Gore and Bracken (2005) found that even with low levels of threat, they were able to take individuals who had started to exhibit defensive fear control reactions to move toward danger control (intention change) reactions. Another way of defending yourself against fear appeals is prior knowledge, according to one study, individuals are less likely to be influenced by a fear appeal if they have prior knowledge. This is your brain on drugs,