Page 30 of the January 2023 Toastmaster magazine has an article by John Cadley titled The Non-Glossophobes and subtitled Want to know who’s not afraid of public speaking? Don’t ask Google. He says nearly 75% of people are afraid of public speaking, and then asks about the 25% who are not. I was appalled that his Funny You Should Say That column chose to make light of what instead should be a serious issue. He opens with:
“If you think Google can tell you everything there is to know, ask it to search ‘people who are not afraid of public speaking.’ Research indicates that nearly 75% of people are afraid, so that leaves 25% who aren’t. Who are they? Google won’t tell you. It seems to assume you’re really in that fearful 75% category and have simply made a mistake, which it is happy to correct by offering you 10 trillion sites on … fear of public speaking!”
And a paragraph later he says:
“Google’s ignorance is not only alarming; it’s insulting. Apparently, it doesn’t know about the hundreds of thousands of Toastmasters who have overcome their fears to become self-assured, polished speakers. Are they among the 25% that Google’s clutching global algorithms can’t seem to find? I believe they are. I think Google is jealous. Google can only speak through canned, electronic voices. Google has no compelling message to share. Google doesn’t know what to say until you ask it a question. Google has no body language. Google can’t give an Ice Breaker speech. Google is a dud.”
We can estimate just how few Toastmasters there ever have been compared with the world population. For an upper bound, let’s assume a current membership of 300,000 times a hundred years for a total membership of 30 million. There currently are about eight billion people in the world, so Toastmasters members would be just three-eighths of a percent and barely scratching the surface. (If we instead compare with the alleged 75% fearing public speaking, that would rise to a measly half percent). There are two possible responses to that miniscule percentage. Both are in an old joke about shoe salesmen repeated by Ray Brimble at String Theory on July 19, 2020 in an article titled The Urgency of Nothingness. Two salesmen are sent from New York City to a developing country. One wires back that he is returning tomorrow because the situation is hopeless, since no one wears shoes. The other wires that he’s staying because there is incredible business potential, since no one yet wears shoes.
Real statistics on fear should be used to market Toastmasters International. I suspect John didn’t bother to do a Google search, but instead just took the first pathetic line from a Toastmasters press release on October 21, 2015 titled Five Public Speaking Myths Debunked:
“Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, is a common social phobia, with an estimated 75 percent of the population experiencing some form of anxiety before giving a speech.”
It was repeated on as the second sentence in another press release on October 15, 2019 which I blogged about on December 8, 2019 in a post titled Toastmasters press releases confuse a fear of public speaking with a social phobia. Any time you see a phrase like ‘the population’ you should immediately ask where that was, when the survey that found that percent was done, who did it, and why. On March 22, 2019 I blogged about An apparently authoritative statistic about fear of public speaking that really lacks any support.
The phony 73% (for men), 74% average and 75% (for women) was made up in 2012 by Statistic Brain, who claimed it instead came from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health. But it was wrongly cited, as I blogged about on August 14, 2020 in a post titled Toastmaster magazine is spreading nonsense from John Bowe about how common the fear of public speaking is.
What percent of people really fear public speaking? There are results for several countries, and two groups of countries, as shown above in a bar chart. Click on it for a better, larger view. On August 15, 2012 I blogged about how Surveys show that public speaking isn’t feared by the majority of adults in nine developed and eleven developing countries. On February 7, 2011 I posted about Fears of superiors and public speaking in Hong Kong, and on March 25, 2011 I blogged about how Almost one in 4 Swedes fears public speaking. On June 5, 2015 I posted about how Snakes are the most common fear for Canadians, followed by heights and public speaking. And on March 3, 2020 I blogged about how An obscure UK survey from 2005 found public speaking was the most common fear there.
Many surveys have been done on fear of public speaking in the U.S. My bar chart includes a half dozen. On October 11, 2011 I blogged about results (21.2%) reported by Ruscio et al in a 2008 article about the National Comorbidity Survey – Replication [NCS-R] in a post titled What’s the difference between a fear and a phobia? And on September 24, 2022 I blogged about how 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%) . An article by Geoffrey Brewer at Gallup (40%) on March 19, 2001 titled Snakes top list of American fears also included results (45%) from their 1998 survey. An on October 27, 2009 I blogged about a 1973 Bruskin survey (40.6%) in a post titled The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from? Finally, on May 19, 2011 I blogged about (45%) America’s Number One Fear: Public Speaking – that 1993 Bruskin-Goldring survey.
If you want to talk about fear of public speaking to market Toastmasters, please use a real statistic specific to a country. For example, since there are 264 million adults in the US, multiplying by 0.212 leads to saying there are 56 million of us who fear public speaking.
The cartoon of a woman speaker was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.
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