No! I’ve been hearing that sort of nonsense for the past
eleven years. As shown above, it usually is just an assertion made but not
proved or even referenced – an ipse dixit. For example, an article at Lifehack
by Kyle Pott titled How to get over your fear of public speaking proclaimed:
“The number one fear in the world, ahead of even the fear of
death, is the fear of public speaking.”
That claim also showed up back in a 2002 book by Pat
Williams titled The Paradox of Power: A Transforming View of Leadership:
“Poll after poll has shown that the number one fear we face
in life is not the fear of death or snakes or the dark. No, the number one fear
in the world is fear of public speaking.”
Other times a reference is hinted at – but does not stand up
to scrutiny. Over at VitalityLIVINGCollege Dr. Rangana Rupavi Choudhuri wrote another article
about What are the common fears and phobias, eliminate them for good! She said:
“I was surprised to learn that according to the Institute of
Mental Health (April 2015), the fear of public speaking is the number one fear
in the world – beating the fear of death and spiders. People would rather die
than speak in public!”
But the bar chart she showed displayed baseless nonsense,
which I has blogged about in a post on December 7, 2014 titled Statistic Brain
is just a statistical medicine show.
As shown above, the number one world fear claim is a paper dragon – a Startling Statistic brought up to get attention before going on to describe how that fear can be eliminated.
On February 3, 2014 I blogged about Busting a myth – that 75%
of people in the world fear public speaking. In that post I pointed out there
is a silly tendency to jump from real surveys of much narrower groups to the
entire world. On April 9, 2012 I blogged about how a Poll by Reader’s Digest Canada
found fear of public speaking wasn’t ranked first in 15 of 16 countries
surveyed.
How would you even go about surveying the entire world? Perhaps a quarter of the people speak English, so you would need to ask question in several different languages. I have not seen such a survey, and doubt that one exists. On October 16, 2014 Pew Global had an article titled Greatest dangers in the world. It only discussed 44 countries about five dangers: AIDS & other diseases, Inequality, Nuclear Weapons, Pollution & Environment, and Religious and Ethnic Hatred.
How would you even go about surveying the entire world? Perhaps a quarter of the people speak English, so you would need to ask question in several different languages. I have not seen such a survey, and doubt that one exists. On October 16, 2014 Pew Global had an article titled Greatest dangers in the world. It only discussed 44 countries about five dangers: AIDS & other diseases, Inequality, Nuclear Weapons, Pollution & Environment, and Religious and Ethnic Hatred.
An image of Enrico Caruso came from Wikimedia Commons, and an
image of the Dragon of Wantley came from the Library of Congress.
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