Accountemps survey reveals workers are most afraid of making errors on the job - and public speaking tied for fourth

On October 24th Accountemps released a survey about Workplace Frights just in time to scare us for Halloween. They asked 420 workers to choose from a list in reply to being asked:

“Which one of the following is your greatest fear?"

Their results are shown above in a bar chart. (Click on it to see a larger version). Making errors on the job (28%) was first, dealing with difficult customers or clients was second (18%), and conflicts with your manager (15%) was third. Conflicts with coworkers (13%) and speaking in front of a group of people tied for fourth.   

Last Tuesday I blogged about how Either way you look at it, public speaking really is not our greatest fear. Public speaking was feared by more people in only six of nineteen surveys. Add this survey, and the score becomes six out of twenty, or only 30%. That refutes a silly claim made by Donald Michael Kraig at California Psychics on July 19, 2011:  

“For almost four decades, research polls investigating fears have revealed that the number one fear is...public speaking.”

The scary painting of Bertalda Assailed by Spirits was borrowed from Wikimedia Commons.

Free ebook on public speaking - Stand Up, Speak Out

Recently I found a freely readable electronic textbook on public speaking that was published last year. Stand Up, Speak Out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking was written by Jason S. Wrench, Anne Goding, Danette Ifert Johnson, and Bernardo A. Attias. Titles for the nineteen chapters are:

1. Why Public Speaking Matters Today
2. Ethics Matters: Understanding the Ethics of Public Speaking
3. Speaking Confidently
4. The Importance of Listening
5. Audience Analysis
6. Finding a Purpose and Selecting a Topic
7. Researching Your Speech
8. Supporting Ideas and Building Arguments
9. Introductions Matter: How to Begin a Speech Effectively
10. Creating the Body of a Speech
11. Concluding with Power
12. Outlining
13. The Importance of Language
14. Delivering the Speech
15. Presentation Aids: Design and Usage
16. Informative Speaking
17. Persuasive Speaking
18. Speaking to Entertain
19. Your First Speech

It looks like a useful reference for Toastmasters and others who occasionally need to review a subject in more depth.

The poster of October’s Bright Blue Weather came from the Library of Congress.

Loss of iconicity

Back when I was a child, talking on the telephone meant picking up a handset that could be humorously represented either by a prop banana or an iconic hand gesture between ear and mouth (as shown above).

On October 10th Dave Kellett drew a Sheldon comic strip titled Grumpy Cartoonist Corner where he lamented that either showing someone making a phone call or watching a television set was getting far less obvious. Now everything just is a rectangle with a screen, so most activities can’t be drawn in an iconic way.  

Does your speech audience look at you like you’re an alien from outer space?

Perhaps you are using terminology strange to them. Last week in his Accidental Communicator blog Jim Anderson wrote about International Humor: Is It Even Possible For A Speaker? He pointed out the need to first learn about how your audience communicates, which also includes gestures. 

On Friday October 5th I attended a half-day workshop in Salt Lake City on thermal spray technology taught by Dr. Chris Berndt. Chris is a professor in Melbourne, and has been president of ASM International, the Thermal Spray Society, and the Australian Ceramic Society. Chris started by joking about his Aussie English, and said he hoped we could understand it when he got enthusiastic and began to speak quickly. We laughed, but did.   

Thursday evening before Chris Berndt’s workshop he spoke at a meeting of the ASM Utah chapter. We met in the F.A. Sutton building on the north end of the University of Utah campus. When I headed down University Drive past their stadium in mid-afternoon the band was coming out from what I’d assumed was practice for the usual Saturday afternoon football game. Later when I pulled into the visitor parking lot near the Sutton building I was surprised to see that the gate was open, and the adjacent lawn was full of tailgaters wearing red. I asked one and found I had assumed incorrectly. The football game against USC (televised on ESPN) was starting at 7:00 PM on Thursday.  

We had a 1938 Encyclopaedia Britannica on our bookshelf when I was growing up. I remember being puzzled by their different terminology, like aeroplane instead of airplane. They also described tractors that ran on paraffin. In the U.S., paraffin is a solid wax used in candles. They meant a liquid fuel, which we’d have called kerosene. A decade ago I remember we bought a British magazine about kitchen planning and remodeling at a bookstore and were surprised at some of them like:

Many U.S. residents also would be puzzled by a March 28th Canadian newspaper headline that read:

“Millions in loonies and toonies spill onto Ontario highway after Brinks truck crash”

It’s quite logical though. The one-dollar Canadian coin has a loon on it, so it’s called a loonie - and  thus the two-dollar coin is called a toonie.

The image of aliens came from the infamous film Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Either way you look at it, public speaking really is not our greatest fear.

 Even when it’s not Halloween, speaking coaches try to scare us by proclaiming that public speaking is the number one (or the greatest) fear everyone has. Enough of this nonsense! The claim that public speaking is the number one or greatest fear just is a myth, and it is busted. I suspect it came mainly from people assuming that 39 year old survey cited in the Book of Lists and discussed endlessly was the last word on this topic. If you believe it, then I’d suggest you look at some more evidence, as I have.

One way to look at it is to ask what more people fear. That is what most surveys do. On July 30th I blogged about Is fear of public speaking the greatest fear in the entire galaxy? It was ranked first in only five of fifteen surveys that I examined, so that is not true.

Since then I found four more surveys of adults in the U.S.:

Poverty was the greatest fear in Glamour magazine’s 2012 Guy Survey (and public speaking came fifth)

Latest (2012) CareerBuilder survey on biggest workplace fears found that presenting only ranked third

Snakes came first in a 1988 Roper survey of what American adults were afraid of or bothered by (and public speaking was second)

Public speaking came first in a 1987 fear survey by Dental Health Advisor magazine

So, the latest box score is that public speaking was ranked first in only six of nineteen surveys.

What is true based on this type of survey is that public speaking is the number one social fear for adults. There are surveys to back up that statement for the United States, Canada (Alberta and Manitoba), Sweden, and both developed and developing countries. Psychologists know this, but most speaking coaches don’t.

The other way to look at it is to ask what people fear more, which psychologists have done many times using fear survey schedules that rank each of a long list of fears on an intensity scale. Unfortunately their results have been ignored by speaking coaches.

Earlier this month I blogged about three studies of U.S. university students that ranked fear of public speaking other than first: 

In a 1965 study of (U.S.) university students, fear of public speaking ranked sixth for men and seventh for women

In a 1992 study of U.S. university students, fear of public speaking ranked sixth for men and eighth for women

In a 2012 study of U.S. university students, fear of public speaking was ranked sixth

There have been studies of adults in Greece, and university students in Egypt:

In a 2000 study of adults in Greece, fear of public speaking wasn’t ranked in the top ten

In a 1994 study of Egyptian university students, fear of public speaking ranked 63rd for men and 66th for women

There also have been two studies of older adults in West Virginia and Canada:

In a 1999 study of older adults (in West Virginia), fear of public speaking ranked only twelfth

In a 1991 study of Canadians in Metro Toronto ages 50 or over, fear of public speaking ranked 16 for women and more than 9th for men

Two years ago I blogged about What should we really be afraid of for Halloween? The answer is not public speaking.

In a 2004 study of Greek children, public speaking wasn’t in the Top 13 Fears

Back at the beginning of February I blogged about surveys of children’s fears. There was another large survey that I did not discuss then.

In 2004 Robert Mellon, Emmanouil Koliadis and Theodoros D. Paraskevopoulus published a long article in Anxiety Disorders magazine titled Normative development of fears in Greece: Self-reports on the Hellenic Fear Survey Schedule for Children. You can read the abstract here.

They studied 3200 public school students (1546 girls and 1654 boys) in Grade 2 (age 7 or 8) through Grade 6 (age 11 or 12). Students took the Hellenic Fear Survey Schedule for Children. It is a Greek-language adaptation of the Fear Survey Schedule for Children - Revised (FSSC-R) that has 80 items to be ranked for intensity. Table 6 of the article listed the rankings for the most fear-eliciting items in the survey.

The top 13 fears are shown above in a table. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer version). The scale also included an item (#46) on public performance or oral presentation (public speaking), but it did not appear in the top 13 overall or for boys or girls. Eight of the same fears in the top ten were listed by both boys and girls, although they were ranked differently.

On February 2nd I blogged about the Top ten fears of children in the United States, Australia, China, and Nigeria. Greek children overall had seven of the same top ten fears as for that pooled sample: hit by a car or truck, bombing attacks, not able to breathe, fire - getting burned, falling from a high place, having my parents argue, and failing a test.

On February 15, 2011 I blogged about When does fear of public speaking start? In that post I showed a graph that indicated only 50% of those German young people feared public speaking by age 13. It’s not surprising that these Greek children didn’t rank the fear in their top 13.

The image of children from Cappadocia in traditional costume came from Zoriusert at Wikimedia Commons.

Over in the United Kingdom today is the last day of Face Your Fears Week

On October 16th I blogged about it being National Face Your Fears Day in the U.S.. Across the Atlantic today is the last day of Face Your Fears Week, which is a fund raising campaign for a charity concerning facial disfigurement called Changing Faces.

They have a list of top ten fears that (of course) includes public speaking.

1. Flying
2. Public Speaking
3. Heights
4. Water
5. Intimacy
6. Needles
7. Confined Spaces
8. Spiders
9. Snakes
10. Dogs






Last year they posted a YouTube video adapted from an old Coronet instructional film, which reminded me of schooldays long ago.

They also have a humorous video warning Don’t Try This At Home. Note that National Face Your Fears Day just is about me, while Face Your Fears Week is about helping others.