At Forbes on December 27, 2021 there is an otherwise decent article by Johnny Warström with a misleading title of Facing our greatest fear: How senior leaders can handle public speaking in the new normal. It opens with this paragraph:
“More of us are affected by glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, than a fear of spiders, heights and even death. Yes, you read that right. Apparently, we are more scared of speaking up in public than we are of dying. It seems some of us would sooner die than deliver a presentation at work. How did it come to this?”
First, when you click on the link (to a Washington Post article about the Phobias from the 2014 Chapman Survey of American Fears), you will find that while public speaking is the most common fear it does not ever mention death. Second, Johnny shifted from asking if more of us are scared (how many) to if we were more scared (how much) in his title and third sentence - quite a different question.
Worse still his superficial research ignored a half-dozen more recent Chapman surveys. Results from the latest 2020/21 survey of ninety-five fears would lead us to both change the article title and rewrite the opening paragraph as follows:
“Public speaking isn’t a very big deal for U. S. adults. A recent survey found that it’s their 54th most common fear (out of 95) at 29%; ranked below others like Heights (#46, 31.2%), Sharks (#51, 29.5%), and even Dying (#53, 29.3%). Contrast those with People I Love Dying, ranked at #2 (58.5%) behind the most common fear of Corrupt Government Officials (79.6%).”
There were seven Chapman surveys, and the six more recent ones included the fear of dying. As shown above via a bar chart, public speaking wasn’t anywhere near the most common fear. Also, in the three most recent surveys fear of dying outranked the fear of public speaking. You can find their other fear lists online for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.
I blogged about that 2014 survey a day before the Washington Post article in a post titled Chapman Survey on American Fears includes both zombies and ghosts. But along with a phobias category that survey also has eight fears about crime, as also are shown above in a bar chart. One of those (identity theft/credit card fraud) was feared by 49.7% of Americans, or almost twice the 25.3% for public speaking.
On December 6, 2021 I blogged about how Most Americans are not terrified of public speaking. By using the detailed results from those Chapman surveys we can calculate Fear Scores, and for 2020/21 will find that on a scale where 1 = Not Afraid, 2 = Slightly Afraid, 3 = Afraid, and 4 = Very Afraid the fear of public speaking is scored just barely over Slightly Afraid, at 2.023.
How could we honestly make the fear of public speaking look significant? Forget about that #54 ranking, and convert the percentage to a number. The 2020 U. S. Census found there were 258.3 million adults 18 years and older. Just multiply that huge number by 0.29, and you get that there are 74.9 million people who fear public speaking.
The Pinocchio image was cropped, Photoshopped, and colored from the 1899 book, Le Avventure di Pinocchio at the Internet Archive.
No comments:
Post a Comment