What percent of adults dread public speaking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a recent magazine article by Robin M. Kowalski et al. in The Journal of Social Psychology for 2025 (Volume 165, Issue 1 pages 135 to 153) titled Psychological dread and extreme persistent fear. You can find the abstract here or here. It is interesting because, as shown above, it looked at two higher levels of fear, Dread and Extremely Afraid, than usually are in surveys like the Chapman Survey of American Fears (Very Afraid, Afraid, Slightly Afraid, Not Afraid).

 

They did two different studies on dread with nonrandom sampling. The first used an online sample of 211 that was very skewed (82.9% female and 96.6% white). It was a “snowball sample,” with invitations to participate posted at Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Canvas, and GroupMe with respondents encouraged to share the invitation. The second used another less skewed online sample of 260 through Prolific (another snowball sample) that is 53.5% female and 81.5% white. For the first sample, the Margin of Error is plus or minus 6.7%, and for the second it is plus or minus 6.1%. The second study also covered extremely feared events. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Results for Dread from the first study (Table 1) are shown above via a bar chart. The top five dreads were Academic: 16.6%, Work: 12.7%, Conflict/Confrontation: 10.7%, Significant Life Change: 10.2%, and Health: 7.3%. Public speaking was dreaded by only 2%.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Results for Dread from the second study (Table 4) are shown above via a second bar chart. The top five dreads were Health: 16.1%, Work: 12.4%, Family: 11.7%, Legal/Finance: 8.9%, and a tie for Events and Public Speaking: 7.3%.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Results for Extremely Feared from the second study (Table 4) are shown above via a third bar chart. The top five were Other: 26.0.%, Death: 17.9%, Health: 11.7%, Relationships: 7.3%, and a four-way tie at 6.5% for Conflict, Legal/Finances, Socializing and Travel. Then came Family: 4.1% and Public Speaking: 3.3%.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How do these results compare with those for Very Afraid of Public speaking in the Chapman Survey of American Fears? Those results are shown above in a fourth bar chart. The mean for Very Afraid is 11.0%, which larger than those found for Dread or Extremely Feared.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As shown above in a fifth bar chart, the most common fear in the Chapman Survey (with a mean of 38%) is Corrupt Government Officials. That mean is about 3.4 times that for Public Speaking.