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 that the effect of fear on intentions is mediated by the perceived severity. That is, fear does not act directly on intentions, but increases the level of perceived severity, which in turn raises intentions to act on the message. Indeed, the strength of the fear appeal is believed to be positively correlated with the perceived severity of the threat. Severity seems to produce the strongest effects on perceptions. The previous components are thought to determine what response an individual has to the message. One of these potential reactions to the fear appeal that is of the most negative consequence is