Arachnophobia even faint when they come in contact with an area near spiders or their webs. In some extreme cases, even a picture or a realistic drawing of a spider can trigger intense fear. Arachnophobia may be an exaggerated form of an instinctive response that helped early humans to survive, or a cultural phenomenon that is most common in predominantly European societies. An evolutionary reason for the phobia remains unresolved. One view, especially held in evolutionary psychology, is that the presence of venomous spiders led to the evolution of a fear of spiders, or made acquisition of a fear of spiders
Women's fear of crime and victimization rates. A 1998 study in Glasgow, Scotland, found a gender disparity in fear of crime levels smaller than what is generally accepted. The study also found that men and women with similar fear levels tended to use similar reasoning to explain their fear of crime or lack of fear, although men's and women's fear appeared in different situations (men tended to be more often fearful about property crime, whereas women were more fearful about violent crime). A 2010 Turkish study using a large nationwide sample confirmed that women expressed significantly higher levels of fear of crime than men.