Do you know what has been going on around you?

On February 24, 2017 there was an article written by Eiren Combs titled How to Deal with Your Fear of Public Speaking posted at the FlockU web site. She described five decent ways:

1] Wear a turtleneck (so your blushing is less visible).

2] Do breathing exercises.

3] Hold something sturdy (like the lectern, so you don’t shake as much).

4] Power pose.

5] Smile.

But the third paragraph in her introduction said:

“According to Statistics Brain, about 74 percent of the U.S. population has a fear of public speaking. This fear tops the U.S phobia charts, even beating out the number two fear: death.”

I found that hilarious considering she is listed as a class of ’20 student at Chapman University, where there have been three national surveys done on American fears. The 2015 survey ranked public speaking as 26 out of 89 fears, while the 2016 survey ranked it 33 out of 79 fears. On December 20, 2016 I blogged about them in a post titled Bursting the overblown claim that 95% of Americans fear public speaking at some level. The average fear levels from all three surveys were lower than the bogus 74% reported by Statistic Brain:

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%

The image of Little Miss Muffet came from the Library of Congress.