Monday, June 15, 2015

Snakes are the most common fear for Canadians, followed by heights and public speaking
















On June 8, 2015 the Canadian Cancer Society issued a press release about an online survey they had done by Angus Reid to go with their Fearless Challenge fund raising campaign. It was titled Snakes and ladders top list of Canadians‘ fears, just don’t ask them to speak publicly about it. They polled 1500 adults.














As shown above in a bar chart, the five most common fears were snakes (40%), heights (34%), public speaking (33%), spiders (31%), and natural disasters (30%). (Click on the chart for a larger, clearer view). There was not a link to the detailed results. But, the Toronto Sun had more results for women and men in an article they mis-titled Snakes are Canadians’ greatest fear: Survey.














As shown above in a second bar chart, the four most common fears for women were snakes (46%), a tie between natural disasters (40%) and spiders (40%), mice/rats (38%), and a tie between heights (37%) and public speaking (37%).














As shown above in a third bar chart, the five most common fears for men were snakes (33%), heights (31%), public speaking (28%), spiders (21%), and a tie between natural disasters (20%) and tight spaces (20%).

All the fears for women were much more common than those for men. Snakes were feared by 46% of women and just 33% of men, and spiders by 40% of women and just 21% of men. Note that public speaking was not the most common fear overall (ranked 3rd), for women (ranked 4th), or for men (ranked 3rd).

An image of a garter snake came from Wikimedia Commons.  

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