Saturday, June 29, 2024

A Chapman University news article confuses what more people fear (sharks) with what people fear more (public speaking)

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a brief Chapman University news article by Carly Murphy on June 27, 2024 titled Riding the Wave: fear of sharks surpasses public speaking as sharks dominate the news. She begins by stating:

 

“As you cover beach season stories, Chapman University’s 2023 Survey of American Fears offers a depth of data to the narrative. A trend has emerged: sharks are more feared than public speaking and other common anxieties. Key insights from the survey, which ranked 97 fears among 1,014 Americans include:

 

30.1% of Americans are scared or very scared of sharks, ranking 52nd overall. Fear of sharks surpasses that of public speaking (28.7%), reptiles (25.9%) and insects/spiders (25.3%).”

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But the percentages she discussed represent what more people fear, and not what people fear more. What people fear more is described by Fear Scores, on a scale from one to four (as shown above) where 1 = Not Afraid, 2 = Slightly Afraid, 3 = Afraid, and 4 = Very Afraid. And sharks in not the largest. Those scores are public speaking 2.041, sharks 2.021, reptiles 1.958, and insects/spiders 1.939. On October 30, 2015 I discussed calculating them when I blogged about how According to the 2015 Chapman Survey of American Fears, adults are less than Afraid of federal government Corruption and only Slightly Afraid of Public Speaking. (For 2023 the largest Fear Score for Corrupt government officials is 2.771).  

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 30.1% for sharks is the sum for the Very Afraid (12.9%) and Afraid (17.2%) fear levels  reported since 2015 by Chapman on their Percentage Lists (2023 here). Another 29.0% were just Slightly Afraid of sharks, and adding them produces a grand sum of 59.1%. But we also could just compare based on the Very Afraid percentage. As shown above, sharks then are above reptiles and public speaking. And, based on the grand sum both public speaking and insects/arachnids are feared by more people than sharks are.   

A shark cartoon came from Openclipart.

 


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