We learned from our results that people who are afraid of spiders imagine them to be bigger. We also learned that in order to overestimate the size of an object, that object needs to cause the person to feel fear and unpleasantness on a daily basis.
We demonstrated in this work that negative emotions (fear and unpleasantness) cause people to overestimate size. But what about positive emotions? Some studies found that positive emotions could also change size estimation. For example, expert golf players estimate the physical size of the hole the ball is hit into to be larger than non-expert players estimate the hole to be.
The next question to be asked is what causes what? Do some people have an image of a big spider in their mind and this is why they are afraid of spiders? Or are they afraid of spiders because when they see one, they see it as bigger than it really is? This question requires some more studies. Such additional studies are important because understanding why people are afraid of spiders can help scientists develop ways to help such people get over their fear.

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