A new study published in Frontiers in Psychology investigated humans’ fear of venomous snakes across different cultures, finding that Somali and Czech participants shared a significant fear of vipers, hinting at a cross-cultural phenomenon.
Humans are capable of quickly recognizing threats, especially in response to snakes. This capability, shared with other primates, is an evolutionary adaptation for detecting and responding to threats. The fear of snakes is considered an ingrained neurobehavioral response involving immediate detection, emotional fear, and a subsequent reaction. Humans have likely evolved to recognize ancestral threats, such as snakes, triggering an automatic response in the brain.
In this work, Daniel Frynta and colleagues recruited 155 Somali and 144 Czech participants. They were presented with images of 48 snake species from four distinct groups based on venomous (vipers and elapids) and non-venous traits (sand boas and colubrids). To eliminate biases photos were standardized in terms of size and background.
Participants were tasked with ranking the images in order of the fear they elicited, from the most to the least fear-evoking picture. This order was recorded and became the dataset reflecting participants’ subjective fear responses. Participants’ age and gender was also recorded.
Vipers were consistently ranked as the most fear-eliciting snakes. This was observed across both Somali and Czech respondents, suggesting a strong, possibly innate, fear response towards vipers. Elapids (like cobras and mambas) and colubrid snakes were generally ranked lower compared to vipers, indicating a differential fear response based on snake species or types.
Further, certain morphological traits of snakes, particularly body width, were good predictors of the level of fear they elicited. Vipers, with their wider bodies and distinct head shapes, seemed to trigger more fear than slender-bodied snakes. Interestingly, there was considerable cross-cultural agreement in the fear ranking of various snake species, suggesting a universal or shared aspect of fear responses to snakes among humans.
A possible methodological limitation is the influence of prior knowledge or personal experience of snakes on participants’ fear responses.
Overall, these findings highlight the nuanced nature of human fear responses to snakes, influenced by snake morphology and potentially rooted in evolutionary history.
The study, “Are vipers prototypic fear-evoking snakes? A cross-cultural comparison of Somalis and Czechs”, was authored by Daniel Frynta, Hassan Sh Abdirahman Elmi, Markéta Janovcová, Veronika Rudolfová, Iveta Štolhoferová, Kateřina Rexová, David Král, David Sommer, Daniel Alex Berti, Eva Landová, and Petra Frýdlová.