A YouGov America poll in June 2022 found public speaking was the fourth most common fear for adults (23%) and women (26%), but the second most common for men (20%)

 

There is an article by Taylor Orth at YouGov America on June 16, 2022 titled Three in 10 Americans fear snakes – and most who do fear them a great deal. It reports results from a poll of 1,000 U.S. adults done between June 8 and June 13. They asked about 34 specific fears, and both Others and I Have No Fears. More detailed results are reported on another web page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poll results are shown above via a bar chart. The five most common fears are snakes (30%), heights (28%), spiders (24%), public speaking (23%), and disease (21%).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They also presented results for women and men, shown above in another two bar charts. For women the five most common fears are snakes (39%), spiders (31%), heights (30%), public speaking (26%), and disease (25%). For men the five most common fears are heights (26%), public speaking (20%), snakes (19%), spiders (16%), and disease (16%). In most cases more women than men reported a fear, with the largest difference being 20% for snakes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There also is a bar chart titled Which things are feared a great deal by Americans who fear them? Somewhat confusingly it lists the percentage who reported having a fear. For example, 61% feared snakes a great deal (actually out of the 30% who feared snakes). I have replotted those percentages in another chart where, for example, snakes were feared a great deal by 18.3%.

 

Back on April 2, 2014 I blogged about their previous survey in a post titled YouGov survey of U.S. adults found they most commonly were very afraid of snakes, heights, public speaking, spiders, and being closed in a small space. That survey looked at fears in just 13 situations.