What do people think about whether Donald Trump will be able to keep his campaign promises?

At the Washington Post on November 28, 2016 Jenna Johnson had an article titled ‘I will give you everything.’ Here are 282 of Donald Trump’s campaign promises.

In the aftermath of the election The Economist and YouGov did a poll about what people believe that was reported on December 27th in an article by Kathy Frankovic titled Belief in Conspiracies largely depends on political identity. It linked to a 144-page .pdf file with detailed results. Another Washington Post article by Catherine Rampell titled Americans - especially but not exclusively Trump voters - believe crazy, wrong things discussed some conspiracies. What caught my attention in the detailed results instead was two questions (#20 and #21) about campaign promises. One of them was:
 
“About how many of Donald Trump’s campaign promises do you think he will TRY to keep?”

Not sure
Hardly any of them
Some of them
Most of them
All of them

When we look at the sum for All of them and Most of them, we see there is a large partisan divide. For the Total sample there is 38%. For Republicans there is 70% (like believing in Santa Claus), for Independents there is 35% (close to the Total, and half of that for Republicans), but for Democrats there is just 19% (half the Total).

Detailed results for this question are shown in a bar chart. Click on it for a larger, clearer view.

A second more realistic question was:

“About how many of Donald Trump’s campaign promises do you think he will be able to keep?”

Here when we look at the sum for All of them and Most of them, we see again there is a large partisan divide. For the Total sample there is 23%. For Republicans there is 45% (almost twice the Total), for Independents there is 18% (again close to the Total),  and for Democrats there is 14%.

Detailed results for this question are shown in another bar chart. Click on it for a larger, clearer view.

The image by Carol M. Highsmith showing a statue of Tex Randall came from the Library of Congress.

Shallow versus deep research about how much Americans trust their mass media

On December 26th Jane Genova spat out yet another shallow blog post titled Media - Trust Down to 32% (Source: Gallup). She linked to their September 14, 2016 article titled Americans’ Trust in Mass Media Sinks to New Low. But Jane didn’t bother to tell us  the question, dig into the detailed results, or comment on what they really meant. Here is what Jane missed by barely scratching the surface.

Gallup had repeatedly asked the following question:

“In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media -- such as newspapers, T.V. and radio -- when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly -- a great deal, a fair amount, not very much, or none at all?”

The summary statistic they had reported was the percent for a great deal plus a fair amount.

The infographic shown above portrays one result from 2016 - only 8% of us had a Great Deal of trust, while another 24% just had a Fair Amount of trust, for a total of 32%. What about the past decade? (Gallup also has data from 1997 to 2005, but none for 2006).

A table shown above lists Gallup results for the past decade by all four poll categories:

None at All = 1
Not Very Much = 2
Fair Amount = 3
Great Deal = 4

Back in 2007 only 47% (less than half of us) had either a Great Deal or a Fair Amount of trust, and since then it generally has been dropping. In 2010 just 12%, or one of eight, had a Great Deal of trust and it has been even lower in the other nine years. We didn’t really trust the media very much over that time period. 

How did party affiliation affect that drop from 40% in 2015 to 32% in 2016? Independents went from 33% to 30%. Democrats went from 55% to 51%. But Republicans went from 32% to only 14%. That’s an 18% drop that accounts for most of the overall 8% drop. 

There is another way to look at those poll results, by calculating a Trust Score using the formula (similar to a Fear Score):

Trust Score = [ 1x(% for None at All)
 + 2x(% for Not Very Much)
3x(% for Fair Amount)
 + 4x(% for Great Deal)]/100

Another table shows the Trust Score, which has has dropped from just 2.37 in 2007 (less than halfway up from Not Very Much to a Fair Amount) to only 2.13 in 2016.
 

Don’t underestimate the ingenuity of an annoyed user

On November 29, 2016 in the Shark Tank blog at Computerworld there was an amusing story titled Never EVER underestimate an irritated user.

A large manufacturer had proclaimed a new security policy - all computer screens will lock up after 15 minutes with no activity. Then users had to log back in again - with their passwords that had to be changed frequently.

"An employee on the factory floor was very irritated by this change, and devised a system so that his computer would never lock.

He turned his optical mouse upside down so that the sensor was facing up. Then he hung a rag over the mouse, and positioned a fan to blow at the rag.

That way, there was always mouse activity on the computer -- and he never had to key in his password to gain access to the computer during his shift."

Using yourself as a prop for a speech

Patricia J. Martens was director of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP) from 2004 to 2014. She died on January 10, 2015 from mesothelioma (asbestos lung cancer). A magazine article about her titled Researcher Patricia Martens Turned Dry Data into Stories appeared in the February 2015 issue of Healthcare Policy, Vol. 10, No. 3, pages 10 to 13. I found it in a search at PMC. It describes some of her presentation poses:

“....Most memorable, however, was her trademark ‘squish and shift’ gesture, in which she clasped her hands and raised her arms to form a triangle. She used this gesture to help audiences understand the significance of changing the position and shape of a bell curve representing the distribution of a particular health or social indicator in a population.

If the whole curve could be shifted in a positive direction (she would maintain the triangle proportions but shift her arms to the side) the overall population health gains could be significant, but the gap between the least and most healthy (the tails of the curve) would remain the same. Next, she would demonstrate the ‘squish’ (she would bring her elbows closer together) to explain the importance of a targeted effort to reduce inequality by improving the condition of those who were least healthy.”

Patricia also used another simple prop:

“She would distribute licorice sticks, for example, to help non-statisticians grasp the significance of the Lorenz curve, a graphical representation of income-related inequality. The more the curve sags, the greater the inequality. Dr. Martens would have audience members bend their licorice to mirror the curve on the slide of a graph she projected – a curve that revealed, in one instance, that rates of suicide (and suicide attempts) in Manitoba were much higher for people in the 20-per-cent-lowest-income category. This curve, she noted, suggested the need for targeted interventions. In contrast, an almost-straight line on another graph revealed that among people over 55, dementia affects all income groups in Manitoba almost equally, suggesting the need for universal interventions.”

Patricia wrote a long magazine article about The Right Kind of Evidence - Integrating, Measuring, and Making It Count in Health Equity Research in the Journal of Urban Health, December 2012, Vol. 89, No. 6, pages 925 to 936.

A yoga pose came from Openclipart, and the rainbow licorice sticks came from Wikimedia Commons.

How far should you trust a list of 50 Top Public Speaking Blogs that actually has 54 items?

Not very far! In November Feedspot had an article titled Top 50 Public Speaking Blogs Every Speaker Must Follow. They also had another article titled Top 50 Woodworking Blogs Every Woodworker Must Follow which listed 60 items. I don’t like being told what I must do by people who can’t even count. 

This blog wasn’t on that public speaking blog list, since I don’t do Twitter or Facebook. Some blogs that were on it like Manner of Speaking, and Expert Media Training had posts about being on that list. But they didn’t mention that Feedspot should take lessons from Count von Count. 

Even more hilariously the Feedspot article titled Top 100 Leadership Blogs for Executives, Managers and CEO’s listed 293 items - but at the bottom instead claimed it showed the Top 300 Leadership Blog Winners.

Bursting the overblown claim that 95% of Americans fear public speaking at some level

One overblown claim I’ve found is that 95% (or 19 out of 20) of Americans fear public speaking at some level. It would be a marvelous statistic for marketing speaking training or coaching assuming it is true - but it isn’t. 

This year it popped up in Raymond Evan’s book Public Speaking for Beginners:

“In fact, statistics show that some degree of public speaking fear/nervousness affects an estimated 95% of speakers.”

Back on March 5, 2010 I blogged about Is there really a pandemic of public speaking fear? I mentioned that Doug Staneart had also claimed:

“Surveys show that 95% of the population admit to feeling fear of public speaking or stage fright.”

Another article of his at The Leader’s Institute titled Top 5 Myths about Public Speaking Fear repeated it.

It popped up again in a post at the Inflenceology blog by Jeff Paro titled Marketing lessons from my 72 year old mother. He said:

“If your name can come to mind when a prospect or patient is looking for a solution to a problem, you are already light years ahead of your competition.
 
One way to be different is by speaking in public or video marketing.
 
Why?

Because statistically speaking around 95% of the population have some form of fear of public speaking or camera shyness.
 
That means, just by doing either, you are automatically DIFFERENT than 95% of people.
 
Not to mention, the authority positioning that you get from being a speaker.”

It’s time to burst that claim. In the past few years there have been surveys that asked about different levels of fear of public speaking. One was the 2016 Chapman Survey of American Fears (their third one). They found the following percentages:

Not Afraid - 38.3%
Slightly Afraid - 34.7%
Afraid - 16.4%
Very Afraid - 9.1%
Refused (or don’t know) 1.5%

Adding up Very Afraid + Afraid + Slightly Afraid, just 60.2% feared public speaking at some level other than zero (38.3%). That’s a long way from 95% - or 12 rather than 19 out of 20. The 2014 and 2015 Chapman surveys found similar results. (The 2014 one labeled the lower levels slightly differently). When we average all three, the percentages are very similar:

Not Afraid - 36.4%
Slightly Afraid - 34.6%
Afraid - 16.3%
Very Afraid - 9.8%
Very Afraid + Afraid - 26.1%
Very Afraid + Afraid + Slightly Afraid - 60.7%

In 2014 there also was a YouGov survey with four levels. I blogged about it on April 2, 2014 in a post titled YouGov survey of U.S. adults found they were most commonly afraid of snakes, heights, public speaking, spiders, and being closed in a small space. They found the following percentages: 

Not Afraid At All - 23%
Not Really Afraid - 22%
A Little Afraid - 36%
Very Afraid - 20%
Very Afraid + A Little Afraid - 56%
Very Afraid + A Little Afraid + Not Really Afraid - 78%

That 78% from YouGov is higher than the 60.7% average from the Chapman surveys, but still much below the 95% claim. YouGov also surveyed British adults. On March 23, 2014 I blogged about how YouGov survey of British adults found they most commonly were afraid of heights, snakes, public speaking, spiders, and being closed in a small space. Results from that survey were close to those found from their U. S. one.

A bar chart presents results from all five surveys, and disproves the claim that 95% fear public speaking at some level. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer view). So, you can’t leapfrog 95% of people - it’s more likely just ~26%.

But, where did that 95% claim really come from? Actually it refers to communication apprehension (or anxiety) - something broader than fear of public speaking, and it is over three decades old.

One place where it shows up in a 1986 article by James C. McCroskey, Virginia P. Richmond, and Leonard M. Davis titled Apprehension About Communicating With Supervisors: A Test of a Theoretical Relationship Between Types of Communication Apprehension that appeared in the Western Journal of Speech Communication, Spring 1986, Vol. 50, pages 171 to 182. On page 173 they say:

“McCroskey and Richmond (1982) suggest that almost 95% of the population report having communication apprehension about communicating with some person or group.”

Cheryl Hamilton got the story right in her textbook, Communicating for Results 8th edition, 2008  page 157:

“In fact, Richmond and McCroskey reported that approximately 95% of those surveyed in the United States have some degree of communication anxiety.”

Then that statement mistakenly got changed into more narrowly referring just to fear of public speaking. You can find it that way at a web page titled What is Stage Fright at  the Secrets To Public Speaking web site which says:

“It is important to note that 95% of all speakers experience some form of anxiety/nervousness when public speaking (Hamilton, C. (2008/2005). Communicating for Results, a Guide for Business and the Professions (eighth edition). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth).”

It also is at another web page at The Fear Of Public Speaking web site titled What Is The Fear of Public Speaking Called? which similarly says:

“According to academic researchers more than 95% people experience some degree of anxiety/nervousness when public speaking (Hamilton, C. (2008/2005). Communicating for Results, a Guide for Business and the Professions (eighth edition). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth).”

Both of those incorrect references might have come from the Wikipedia page on Glossophobia that got it wrong with 95% back in 2010, and then fixed it to read 75% in 2011.


UPDATE January 9, 2017

On January 7th I received the following comment from Professor Steven S. Vrooman:

“This is word salad. McCroskey and his various colleagues found a durable set of evidence that the 90-95% marker for communication anxiety is there in dozens of studies. Now, that number gets broken down into levels of fear, with 30 and 45 being high and mod high levels. This the commonly reported 75% number.The other 15 have a manageable but relevant anxiety. I am shocked you would use shoddy public opinion polling to try to discredit 50 years of peer-reviewed research. In the end, you suggest anxiety and fear are different. Okay. But that's an intellectually dishonest contribution to this literature.”

That is an amazing display of academic arrogance, beginning with an insult.

Merriam-Webster defines word salad as:

“a jumble of extremely incoherent speech as sometimes observed in schizophrenia.”

What I said about the fear of public speaking was NOT word salad. Instead it was a coherent discussion of some recent statistics about the fear of public speaking. Professor Vrooman incoherently replied by trotting out statistics for communication anxiety, which I had noted was a different and broader concept. And, although he has blogged about why you should Cite Your Sources!, he didn’t bother to give a link or even a title to a magazine article.

Vrooman also whined that I was using shoddy public opinion polling. But textbooks on public speaking have been referring to the 1973 Bruskin and 1993 Bruskin-Goldring polls for decades. Courses on public speaking have been marketed with the claim that public speaking was the number one fear (greater than death). James C. McCroskey referred to Bruskin in his textbook An Introduction to Rhetorical Communication, as I blogged about in a 2014 post on Busting a myth - that 75% of people in the world fear public speaking. Mary Hinchcliff Pelias had an article on pages 41 to 53 in the January 1989 issue of Communication Education magazine titled Communication Apprehension in Basic Public Speaking Texts; An Examination of Contemporary Textbooks. She looked at 25 of them, and found that 13 (including McCroskey) referred either to the Bruskin survey or the article about it in the 1977 Book of Lists.   

Public opinion polls are important because they do random national surveys. I’m not aware of McCroskey and his co-workers having ever done one on public speaking fear (or communication anxiety). There thus is doubt as to whether their conclusions apply to adults in general, or just college students. But there have been national surveys on fear of public speaking published in peer-reviewed magazines. They were not done by communications academics, but found even lower percentages for fear than the public opinion polls I cited in this blog post.  

Have backup plans in case of an emergency

On December 13th at his The Accidental Communicator blog Jim Anderson posted about how Bad Things Happen and Speakers Need To Know How To Deal With Them. I’ve repeatedly blogged about that topic, in posts which you can find under the label of Worst Moments. One of my favorites is a March 10, 2012 post titled How an engineer kept a power failure from derailing a speech.

A month ago the Boise Airport had an emergency - when aircraft were unable to contact the controller up in their tower. Fortunately it happened at about 2:30 AM. You might expect that no air traffic would be active then, but some medical helicopters were (perhaps to refuel).

Was there a problem with them trying to arrive and depart? No, they just went to the backup procedure of announcing themselves on the arrival and departure frequencies.

Meanwhile, the Boise Police sent four officers out to the tower to check on the welfare of the controller. A squad car tried flashing his lights, sounding both his siren and an air horn - but got no response. You might not expect them to be heard, since the reinforced-concrete tower is 295 feet high (the second highest building in the state of Idaho). Eventually they got let in, found the controller who looked “dazed and confused,” and he admitted falling asleep. Officers reportedly smelled marijuana, but drug tests were negative.

Parts of the story eventually were pieced together via requests for police reports, etc., and reported in the Idaho Statesman in a December 9th article titled Air traffic controllers take a nap and grab a snack while pilots’ calls go unanswered and one on December 16th titled Investigation of Boise airport tower silence my include if FAA Staffing rules violated. The December 9th Boise Guardian article smirked ‘Joint’ Investigation at Boise Air Tower.