25 most common phobias in the UK according to a newspaper article in The Scotsman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At The Scotsman on January 28, 2022 there is an article by David Hepburn titled These are the 25 most common phobias in the UK, including nomophobia – the fear of being without a mobile phone. It had previously appeared on January 26 with a titled that instead said there were just 21 fears. The article says that survey was done by 23 and Me, but has no link to detailed results, a description of how many people were surveyed, or exactly when.

 

As shown above in a bar chart, the five most common fears were heights (37%), spiders (31%), confined spaces and public speaking (23%), snakes (21%) and flying (18%). I listed the names with -phobia suffixes used in the article. Most (19) of these are on the 1995 Phobia List. Six others which aren’t are: aquaphobia, nomophobia, trypophobia, globophobia, retrogenraflexaphobia, and sidonglobophobia.  

 

For flying he lists pteromerhanophobia. But that’s a typo, since back on June 25, 2017 I had blogged about how Pteromechanophobia just is a humorous, pseudo-technical term for fear of flying – from a satirical cartoonist. Retrogenraflexaphobia only shows up on Google a handful of times, so I’m surprised that 7% fear it. At the bottom of the list at 6% is arachibutyrophobia – fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. On May 16, 2011 I blogged about Is arachibutyrophobia for real? Back on August 30, 2013 I blogged about Uncommon fears and created the very obscure hoplocynohydrophobia (fear of getting shot by a swimming dog carrying a handgun in its mouth).