Are you a girl between ages 8 and 13 who is deathly afraid of spiders? Do you like sitting on your tuffet? Are you willing to undergo something almost akin to torture in exchange for three therapy and curds and whey? If so, then the University of Graz has an arrangement for you. They’re looking to study fear, and they need Little Miss Muffets to torture with images of spiders to study phobias.
Here’s what the school’s website says about their new exercise in torture. “The researchers are looking for girls aged between 8-13 years who are very fearful of spiders and/or who feel sick at the sight of them. Spiders provoke revulsion for many people and even set off fearful panic. Girls in particular are frequently affected,” adds the university, who generally don’t plan on allowing anyone to develop crime fighting super powers as a result of the experiment.
They plan on showing the young girls in the study frightening pictures of spiders and studying their brain waves, in the hope that this will help them improve their phobia treatments. Or be really amusing. Whatever.
Tags: weird science, little miss muffet, University of Graz, arachnophobia, girls needed for spider fear study, fear of spiders studied scientifically, preteen girls needed for fear of spider study