An article on stage fright by David Pennington claimed public speaking was the #1 fear in a Chapman Survey, but ignored their nine other surveys where it was ranked from #26 to #59.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by David Pennington at LinkedIn Pulse on May 19, 2025 titled Stage Fright Is a Liar. In it he claims that:

 

“A study from Chapman University found that public speaking is America’s #1 fear, even ahead of heights, snakes, and drowning (Ref. 1).”

 

His reference is the:

 

“Chapman University Survey on American Fears, 2014 – 2022”

 

Two things are wrong with these claims. The first is that speaking only was reported as the #1 fear for the dozen in the Phobias subset from the 2014 survey. Those results were in an article by Christopher Ingraham in the Washington Post on October 30, 2014 titled America’s top fears: public speaking, heights, and bugs. But David never mentioned results from the later Chapman surveys for 2015 to 2022.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second is that there also were Chapman Surveys done in both 2023 and 2024. I charted all the data for percent fears of public speaking via two bar charts (shown again above) in a post on December 5, 2024 titled Psychotherapist Jonathan Berent fumbles some statistics about social anxiety and fear of public speaking.

 

Ranks for public speaking in all ten of those surveys (for percent Very Afraid plus Afraid) were:

 

2014       #1

2015       #26

2016       #33

2017       #52

2018       #59

2019       #54

2020/21  #54

2022       #46

2023       #53

2024       #59

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January 10, 2021 I blogged about how The opening paragraph of an article on public speaking earns two pinnochios for telling us lies. Along with a Phobias category that 2014 survey also has eight fears about Crime, as also are shown above in a bar chart. For Crime the question was: How afraid are you of being victimized in the following ways?; while for Phobias the similar question was: How afraid are you of the following? For both there were the same four possible answers: (Very Afraid, Afraid, Somewhat Afraid, Not Afraid At All). One of those (identity theft/credit card fraud) was feared by 49.7% of Americans, or almost twice the 25.3% for public speaking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another way to look at results from the Chapman Surveys is via a Fear Score which ranks how afraid people are of public speaking on a scale going from 1 to 4 where 1 = Not Afraid, 2 = Slightly Afraid, 3 = Afraid, 4 = Very Afraid. I discussed this in a blog post on November 9, 2024 titled Overblown claims about fears from investigators for the 2024 Chapman Survey of American Fears. As graphed above and shown below, people consistently were only Slightly Afraid:

 

Year    Fear Score

2014       1.920

2015       1.956

2016       1.933

2017       1.909

2018       1.947

2019       2.081

2020/21  2.023

2022       2.172

2023       2.041

2024       2.067

 

And on June 7, 2024 I blogged about A recent article about fears and phobias based on mediocre research. In that post I linked to my posts about the 2020/2021 and 2023 Chapman Surveys. Mr. Pennington’s article is another based just on mediocre research.