Cross-Cultural Comparison of Student Attitudes toward Snakes

Abstract

Th ere is an increasing amount of research focusing on the origin of the human fear of animals. However, other dimensions of human views of frightening animals have been largely neglected. Th is study investigated attitudes toward snakes. Th e Snake Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ), which consisted of 58 Likert-type items (Cronbach's α = 0.91), was administered in a sample of students from two countries (Turkey and Slovakia). Students showed negative attitudes toward snakes, especially within the Negativistic and Naturalistic dimensions. Turkish students showed more positive Scientistic and Naturalistic attitudes than Slovakian students, and females showed more negative attitudes toward snakes than males. Although biology majors had more positive attitudes, compared with nonbiology majors, knowledge of snakes and beliefs about untrue myths were similar between these two subgroups. Our research indicates that fear of snakes negatively infl uences other attitudinal dimensions (especially naturalistic and scientifi c attitudes) although no students had been injured by a snake. Keeping various pets at home was associated with less fear of snakes. Nature protection actions should combine direct contact with these controversial animals with interventions against belief in untrue myths about snakes.

Factors Affecting Students’ Attitudes Toward Toads

“…Similar results, but for other animals, can be found in the research of Yore & Boyer, (1997) and Prokop et al, (2009). Higher interest in animals could lead to greater acquisition of knowledge and more positive attitudes toward animals, consequently leading to more pro-environmental behavior (Barney et al, 2005).…”

“…Species that are usually used in attitude research are either charismatic or flagship species such as dolphins (Barney et al, 2005), primates (Lukas & Ross, 2005), or large carnivores (Majic & Bath, 2010;Prokop, Usak & Erdogan, 2011). One branch of research is about attitudes toward animals that people dislike or fear, like sharks (Thompson & Mintzes, 2002), crows (Špur, Pokorny & Šorgo, 2016), snakes, spiders, and bats (Prokop & Tunnicliffe, 2008Prokop et al, 2009) was conducted. However, attitudes toward amphibians had been, with few exceptions, scarcely researched (Randler et al, 2005;Tomažič, 2008;Tomažič, 2011a;Prokop & Fančovičová, 2012;Reimer et al, 2014;Jimenez & Lindemann-Matthies, 2015a;Jimenez & Lindemann-Matthies, 2015b).…”

“…Therefore, it is of great importance that live animals are included in biology lessons (Tomažič, 2008;Prokop et al, 2009). …”

“…Not just amphibians, invertebrates are also the animals that females rate as less popular than males (Prokop & Tunnicliffe, 2010). Some studies found that females generally report greater fear of different animals than males (Arrindell et al, 2000;Prokop et al, 2009;Prokop & Tunnicliffe, 2010;Tomažič, 2011c).…”

A Walk in the Woods: Changing Student Attitudes toward Amphibians and Reptiles

“…Snakes, for example, are largely harmless (Schneider et al, 2001). Even so, people tend to loathe, fear, and even persecute snakes (Alves et al, 2014;Prokop, Özel, & Uşak, 2009), venomous and non-venomous alike, and fear of snakes remains humankind's most common phobia (Isbell, 2009). During fall of 2012, in an attempt to combat superficial herpetophobia and develop an appreciation for amphibians and reptiles among non-science majors, we integrated field work and hands-on herpetology (Schneider et al, 2001) into our instruction of a 1000-level non-laboratory lecture course entitled Conservation of Biodiversity.…”