Trypophobia the Rare Fear of Small Holes

This week the economicstimes.com talk people with a rare phobia of tiny holes.

Researchers have found that a small minority of people suffer from trypophobia. Trypophobia is a fear of clusters of tiny holes. This phobia is so rare that it has been hardly studied.  In the first academic study, researchers found that suffers can make people sick, itch, shake and even cry.

Our ancestors might have had an inbuilt fear of patterns, as patterns were associated with dangerous animals, and trypophobia may be the result of left overs from this survival mechanism. The same logic is asked by scientist about the reason so many people have arachnophobia (the fear of spiders.) Is this a past survival mechanism to stop us being bit by poisonous spiders?

As with all fears they can take over and get out of control, the arachnophobia can become scared a cartoon spiders and the trypophibia can become irrationally scared about soap bubbles or bubbles found in aerated chocolate, like Aero bars.

Psychologists Dr Geoff Cole and professor Arnold Wilkins of Essex University, started the research into tryophobia after  a colleague reported having the phobia. “It is quite extraordinary that images of something as innocuous as the bubbles in a bar of chocolate can bring about this level of aversion,” said Dr Geoff Cole

The research was completed on 300 males and females aged between 18-55 yrs old, using different images of small holes. The experiments results shown that an amazing 18% of the women and 11% of men had an aversion to the holey image finding them either uncomfortable or repulsive.

Read more about the research, results and findings into this interesting and rare phobia: Trypophobia Reasearch and Results