Self-reported automaticity and irrationality in spider phobia

Spider phobic women (n=39) and nonfearful controls (n=41) completed a 20-it em questionnaire measuring the extent to which they experience their fear r eactions to spiders as automatic and irrational. For the phobic sample, the rapy outcome data were also collected. Results suggest that spider phobics tend to view their attitude to spiders as irrational and in this respect, t hey do not differ from control subjects. Furthermore, compared to control s ubjects, phobics more often perceive their responses to spiders as automati c, i.e., not under intentional control. Contrary to expectation, no robust correlation was found between automaticity and irrationality. Interestingly , automaticity was not related to treatment outcome, while irrationality to some extent predicted therapy outcome (i.e., the more phobics experienced their fear as irrational, the more they profited from exposure treatment).