At AhaSlides on January 3, 2025 there is an article by Lawrence Haywood titled Fear of Public Speaking: 15 Tips to Beat Glossophobia in 2025. It begins:
“What is glossophobia?
Glossophobia – the fear of public speaking – is a kind of social anxiety disorder that prevents an individual from speaking in front of a group of people.
We can say with some conviction that you are a sufferer of the fear of public speaking.
How? Well, yes, because you’re reading this article, but also because all of the stats point to it. According to one European study, an estimated 77% of people could suffer from a fear of public speaking.
That’s over 3/4 of the world who are just like you when they’re in front of a crowd. They shake, blush and quiver on stage. Their hearts go a mile a minute and their voice cracks under the pressure of being the sole person tasked to get a message across.”
Using a percentage from one European country to represent the world obviously is complete nonsense. And that article did very superficial research. It just linked to the abstract of an article by Alexandre Heeren et al. rather than the full text you can find or at PubMed Central. The first sentence of that article instead says that rather than their research in Belgium or Switzerland:
“About 77% of the general population fears public speaking. [Reference 1, to a 1999 article by T. Furmark et al. about Sweden]
Back on September 15, 2023 I blogged about how That zombie statistic that 77% of people fear public speaking in back – again. That post referred to an earlier, very similar article from AhaSlides. And it also referred to my blog post on October 12, 2020 titled Do 77% of Americans fear public speaking? No! That percentage described stage fright in Swedes who also had social anxiety disorder. Only 24% of the Swedish general population feared public speaking – about three times less.
That 24% is very similar to the percentages found for the U.S. in the ten Chapman Surveys of American Fears. I have presented those results (for the Very Afraid + Afraid fear levels) most recently in a December 5, 2024 blog post titled Psychotherapist Jonathan Berent fumbles some statistics about social anxiety and fear of public speaking. They were 25.3% for 2014, 27.5% for 2015, 25.5% for 2016, 23.3% for 2017, 26.2% for 2018, 31.2% for 2019, 29.0% for 2020/21, 24.0% for 2022, 28.7% for 2023, and 29.1% for 2024.
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