A 1952 magazine article surveyed fear of public speaking in U.S. university students

Sixty years ago Floyd I. Greenleaf published An Exploratory Study of Speech Fright in the Quarterly Journal of Speech (Volume 38, 1952, pages 326 to 330). You can read the abstract here. The only survey about fear of public speaking that many people know about is one reported in the 1977 Book of Lists. Greenleaf’s results were published 25 years earlier! (His Masters thesis, An Exploratory Study of Social Speech Fright, was done back in 1947). Mr. Greenleaf surveyed 789 students at the University of Iowa (664 males and 125 females) that were enrolled in the Communication Skills course. He asked them to rate their degree of fright as None, Mild, Moderate, or Severe.

Results are shown above in a bar chart. (click on it to see a larger, clearer version. 11% reported none, 32% were mild, 47% were moderate, and 11% were severe.   

Another bar chart compares the percentages for men and women, which differ by five percent or less.

Rating scales later were used to compare many fears via fear survey schedules. Most articles about fear survey schedules don’t provide this detail of percentages at each level. Forty years after Greenleaf’s article, another one by Douglas M. Klieger did. He studied 508 males and 352 females, with fears being ranked on a scale from 0 to 4.

His results for fear of speaking in public are shown above. For females the mean was 2.04, and the standard deviation was 1.20. Although the mean was very close to 2, about 30% of the sample ranked the fear at 1, and about 20% ranked it at 3. For males the mean was 1.84, and the standard deviation also was 1.20. There is a large spread in the results, similar to what Greenleaf saw.  

Klieger’s results for fear of dead people are shown in another bar chart. For females the mean was 2.25, and the standard deviation was 1.28. Although the mean was close to 2, over 20% of the sample ranked the fear at 1, 3 or 4. For males the mean was 1.91, and the standard deviation was 1.22.  

The vintage image of Nathan Straus speaking came from the Library of Congress.

Member of Scottish Parliament bought Public Speaking & Presentations for Dummies book on her expense account

The Sun had an article about how new Labour MSP Anne McTaggart spent £141 ($226)  on books - including a £10 ($16) yellow and black one with the notorious word Dummies in its title. Scots are notoriously frugal, and Bill Leckie ranted:

“Don’t know about you. But the thought crosses my mind that someone who goes for a job paying £57,521 per year and which is all about communicating ideas in a way that sways the opinions of others might already be half-decent at speaking in public.”

Ms. McTaggart retorted that that book was bought for training some of her staff. Still, that loaded word made for a very interesting headline, and a caused her a lot of unwanted notoriety for a small expenditure.

The joy of elaborate student pranks - comedian Jose Barrientos fakes an accent for an entire public speaking course

People judge us based on first impressions, like what we wear and how we speak. Those impressions may be very wrong. Yesterday ABC News had a story about how Jose told his Speech 101 class at Los Angeles City College that he was a recent immigrant, his family were piñata makers, and that he used to ride a donkey to school. For his last speech he finally revealed how he normally speaks, and got a perfect score. The video shown above tells his story. WARNING - there is lots of profane language. You can also watch him doing eight minutes of stand-up comedy without that phony accent.

How you dress also can throw people way off. Almost four decades ago, when I was in the Air Force Reserve, I was at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for the altitude chamber course that everyone had to take before going on flying status. Three months earlier I’d come back from basic training, tech school, and on-the-job training to be a medic in an air evacuation squadron. My rank was still Airman Basic (E-1) so I still didn’t even have one stripe on the sleeves of my fatigues. The first morning was boring classroom stuff. Everyone was glad when we stopped for a coffee break.

Ahead of me in line was a man wearing an unusual blue uniform. When I asked him where he was from, he told me that he was a Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force (officer rank equivalent to a major, O-4). He was on an exchange tour, and was going to Scott Air Force Base (near St. Louis) to fly jet transport planes. I told him that I’d worked as an orderly in the hospital there for a month. Eventually our conversation turned to the topic of metal fatigue. I noticed that he was becoming very perplexed at hearing me talk like an engineer. He’d looked at my sleeves, and hadn’t seen any insignia. Then he’d looked at my collar, and cuffs, and still couldn’t find anything to identify my rank. Finally I told him that I was in the Air Force Reserve (working one weekend each month), and that during the week I was a graduate student in metallurgy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Pacing infinitely

In a November 20th post at Forbes.com about Public Speaking Mistakes to Avoid, Naomi Robbins observes that:

“I’ve been to a number of presentations where the speaker seems to draw an imaginary line on the floor and then walk back and forth on this line throughout the talk.....Recently I heard several speakers who followed a variation of this pattern. They traversed the imaginary line, stayed at the end and talked there for a short while, then talked while they walked to the other end of the line and talked there for a while, repeating this pattern until the talk was over.”

Last August, in post about Broadcasting Complete Confidence as a Speaker, Gary Genard describes this sort of nervous behavior as:

“....pacing back and forth like a caged animal (what I call ‘the motivational speaker syndrome’)”

People who are very nervous often just stand still behind a lectern and tightly grip its edges, like they are trying to steer a bus. Less nervous people pace around, and make the audience nervous.

In an often quoted passage from a poem J.R.R. Tolkien reminds us:

“Not all those who wander are lost;”

However, most are. Their presentation would be improved by purposeful movement. A Toastmasters International web page on gestures suggests:

“For example, walk to the other side of the stage as you move to a new topic or move toward the audience as you ask a question.” 

SPEAK film review

Three months ago I blogged about SPEAK, a film about the 2008 Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking. (Don’t try to look it up on Wikipedia, which only has a page for another 2004 film titled Speak and starring Kristen Stewart). I just borrowed the DVD from my local public library and enjoyed watching it. Speak is a good film, if not a great one. Watching the finals of that contest behind the scenes is fascinating. The film may become a cult classic at Toastmasters District Conferences, as their analog to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The synopsis on the film’s web site and back of the DVD box says that:

“SPEAK is a documentary film about the fear of public speaking, and the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking. Filmmakers Paul Galichia and Brian Weidling embarked on an almost two year journey collecting hundreds of interviews about public speaking anxiety, and capturing every stage of the tense, highly competitive World Championship of Public Speaking. It all culminates in a week of fascinating human drama in Calgary, Alberta, after which one person is crowned “World Champion of Public Speaking.” Funny, inspiring, moving, and utterly absorbing, SPEAK follows the trail of those brave souls who take on the fear of public speaking - the world’s #1 fear - and live to tell the tale.

Come find your voice.

SPEAK”  

That description is somewhat misleading. Only the first 12 minutes of this 89 minute film actually is about fear of public speaking. Most of it is about the 2008 contest, including the varied backgrounds of the finalists.

The Amazon.com description lists actress Caitlin Upton before the two directors. Caitlin was interviewed about her infamous brain freeze at a question-and-answer session in the 2007 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant. Readers of this blog already know that I disagree with that world’s number one fear claim. About ten minutes into the film, in a speech talking about his heart attack, Robert MacKenzie says:

“You know, we hear that the fear of public speaking - what I am doing right this moment - is greater than the fear of death. Not even close!”

 One of the surprises for me was finding that two of the finalists had previously come in third in earlier contests - Jock Elliot in 1994 and Rich Hopkins in 2006. Jock had been a finalist four times, and then won the 2011 contest with this speech. (Rich reviewed the SPEAK DVD back in January).   

I think many will enjoy this film, and seeing just how much can be packed into a roughly six-minute inspirational speech. If you like seeing contests, then put the DVD on your wish list of holiday gifts. (Toastmasters clubs definitely should consider adding it to their libraries).

Dealing with a packaging peeve - ‘wrap rage’

With the holiday shopping season underway, it’s time to discuss packaging that is difficult to open without causing injuries. On May 31st the Atlantic described how Plastic Clamshell Packaging is the Worst, and it was even the subject of a comedy sketch on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

It is a worldwide problem that made the cover of this December’s issue of Reader’s Digest Australia. There was an eight page article describing results from a survey of 500 people. About two-thirds of the people got out sharp objects, and then 75% either cut themselves, or had other injuries as shown above. (Click on these bar charts to see larger, clearer versions). You can find a .pdf file of the article by doing a Google search with the phrases "wrap rage" "Reader's Digest" "StoryCentral”.    

A variety of tools have been used to deal with clamshell packages - can openers, knives, scissors, aviation snips, etc. This Old House showed a selection of Tools to Cure Wrap Rage. A YouTube video describes the OpenIt! gizmo. I just use a combination of scissors and diagonal pliers as shown above. Scissors will cut the clear plastic parallel to the edge and inside of the weld seam. Diagonal pliers make perpendicular cuts, when the package is longer than the blade length on the scissors. That keeps the long sharp clear plastic away from my scissors hand. Diagonal pliers also can cut through plastic or wire ties inside the clamshell package. (Nail clippers would work too, but I already have this nifty Platoshear 170).  

Rehearsing and amateurs versus professionals

A presentation needs to be practiced or rehearsed - just like walking on a slackline or tightrope does. One quote I’ve seen recently says that:

"Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong."

But, how should you rehearse? Back in May 2012 Nick Morgan gave us some excellent advice about Seven ways to rehearse a speech.

Where did that quote come from? When I looked at Google Books there were three different answers in books from 2007. On page 103 of his book Dynamic Components of Personal Power, Jim Bouchard said it was from a commercial for the NFL network. Page 28 of a chapter by Jim Bunch on The Ultimate Coach Approach to Winning in Machlen MacDonald’s book The Power of Coaching...Engaging Excellence in Others said it was from a General Motors car commercial. Barry Gibbons book Speak Easy: Dazzle Every Audience and Leave Them Begging for More attributes it to Harold Craxton.

Barry Popik dug further. In an August 11th post on his The Big Apple blog he said that Nigel Rees’s 2002 book Mark My Words: Great quotations and the stories behind them revealed that it was quoted by Harold Craxton (a musician, composer, and professor at the Royal Academy of Music), and that it referred to musicians. Unfortunately we can’t ask Mr. Craxton where he got it, since he died four decades ago.

Trying to find the origin reminded me of those nested Russian dolls called matroshka. Similarly, in September Dave Kellett had a Sheldon cartoon about literary borrowing, with a sequence that ran from Shakespeare all the way back to classical Greece as follows:

Every writer < Shakespeare < Boccaccio < Dante < Aquinas < Augustine < Aristotle < Plato < Socrates  < Tiggles.

(Tiggles was supposed to be Socrate’s cousin).
     
Images of Andy Lewis and matroshka came from here and here, all on Wikimedia Commons.