Is everyone anxious (or nervous or afraid) about speaking in public?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course not! My title obeys Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, which states that:

 

“Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”

 

But there is an article by Phil Stella from the Greater Cleveland Partnership on September 18, 2023 titled Public Speaking: Overcoming the Fear Factor with an abstract which begins by claiming:

 

“We all experience Presentation Anxiety [PA] from time to time.”

 

Then, under Step no. 1: Recognize how common it is to experience PA, he elaborates:

 

“The first step in managing PA is to understand how many people experience it on a regular basis. This is not something that only happens to you or a small handful of people. It’s actually a perfectly normal human feeling and quite common. Everyone has some degree of PA; it’s a reaction to stress and fear. And we certainly all have stress and fear! Understanding that can help you take a deep breath and relax, knowing there are likely many people in your audience who regularly experience PA.”  

 

On February 14, 2021 I  had blogged about Is everyone afraid (or nervous or anxious) when speaking in public? And that title also obeys Betteridge’s Law of Headlines. In that article I provided a table with results from the six annual Chapman Survey of American Fears from 2014 to 2019. An average of 38.0 percent had no fear (were Not Afraid) of public speaking. I updated the table with results from 2020/21 and 2022, and, as shown above an average of 37.2% were Not Afraid of public speaking.