Psychotherapist Jonathan Berent fumbles some statistics about social anxiety and fear of public speaking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Berent has been a psychotherapist since 1978 and wrote two self-help books. He wrote an article at KevinMd on November 2, 2024 titled When high achievers and isolated adults share a common enemy: social anxiety containing the following claims:

 

“The Anxiety and Depression Association of America estimates that 15 million adults have social anxiety. This number swells when you consider stats, such as the Chapman University Survey of American Fears (2019), which found that 10.7 percent of Americans have a public speaking phobia, and 21.2 percent to 23.3 percent fear public speaking. Similarly, a 2001 Gallup poll found that 40 percent of adults in the United States fear public speaking.”

 

The US Census in 2020 found there were 258.3 million adults, so the 15 million estimated by the Anxiety & Depression Association of America is just 5.8%. That’s lower than what the National Institute of Mental Health web page on Social Anxiety Disorder says: 7.1% in the last year or 12.7% in a lifetime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Chapman Survey of American Fears reported percent fears at four levels: Very Afraid, Afraid, Slightly Afraid, and Not Afraid. Two bar charts with all their data for public speaking from 2014 to 2024 made using Excel are shown above. In 2019 12.8% were Very Afraid, and 10.7% never appeared anywhere. And in 2019 31.2% were Very Afraid or Afraid, not 21.2%. In 2017 23.3% were Very Afraid or Afraid. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Chapman Survey of American Fears did not measure phobia, which is different from Very Afraid. Writing in 2024 why did Jonathan refer to percentages from back in 2019?

 

And the article by Geoffrey Brewer at Gallup on March 19, 2001 is titled Snakes Top List of Americans’ Fears - 51% feared snakes versus 40% for public speaking. But he also reported that in 1998 56% feared snakes while only 45% feared public speaking.

 

The cartoon was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Will homeopathic Ambra Grisea relieve fear of public speaking?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I doubt it. It is diluted so much that any effect likely is a placebo.

 

There is a web page from Rachel Riches Homeopathy from June 28, 2020 titled Anticipatory anxiety? Homeopathy can help in which she listed Ambra Grisea second of five remedies and also listed three others I long ago have blogged about: Argentum Nitricum, Gelsemium, and Lycopodium. She says for intense emotional feelings to select a potency of 200C. Her description begins:

 

“Those needing this remedy are shy and sensitive and generally quite introverted. They feel their emotions strongly and find it very difficult to express how they feel. So any upcoming situations which require performing or speaking in front of people such as an interview, a talk, oral exam can be incredibly difficult.”  

 

A second article from Geeta Hansaria at Thrive in on May 14, 2019 titled These homeopathic remedies can help you overcome social anxiety also mentioned Ambra Grisea, as did a third article by Vikas Sharma at DRHomeo titled Best homeopathic medicines for social phobia. Neither of these articles stated what potency should be taken though. A fourth article at Anxietytesting.com titled All about homeopathy for anxiety said 6C and 30C potencies were best and most widely available for minor complaints and that Ambra Grisea was used for:

 

“Anticipatory anxiety in those who are shy and easily embarrassed. Dreads the pressure of performing in front of others – at an interview, oral exam, social event, etc.”

 

 What the heck is Ambra Grisea? It’s just a fancy Latin name for ambergris (see the Wikipedia article), which my copy of Hawley’s Condensed Chemical Dictionary more briefly describes as:

 

“A waxy, opaque mass containing 80% cholesterol formed in the intestinal tract of the sperm whale and found on beaches or afloat on the ocean.”

 

And what do those potencies of 6C, 30C and 200C mean? The Wikipedia article about Homeopathic dilutions explains that 6C potency is a miniscule ratio of ten to the minus twelfth power, or in Parts-per Notation one part-per-trillion (1 in 1,000,000,000,000). A 30C potency is a ratio of ten to the minus 60 power, and 200C is a ludicrous ten to the minus 400 power. Even at the 6C potency there would only be an absurdly tiny amount of ambergris in the remedy.

 

I looked at the Pubmed  and PubmedCentral medical databases to see if there were any articles with research to back up use of homeopathic ambra grisea or ambergris but found none. I did find mention of ambergris in an article by Paula De Vos in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology for October 28, 2010 titled European Materia Medica in Historical Texts: Longevity of a Tradition and Implications for Future Use.

 

Where did the connection of this homeopathic remedy and the symptoms come from? On the web you can find a page from the Materia Medica produced by William Boericke 1849 – 1929 (or the whole 1922 book at the Internet Archive). Under the heading of Mind it says:

 

“Dread of people, and desire to be alone. Cannot do anything in presence of others. Intensely shy, blushes easily. Music causes weeping. Despair, loathing of life. Fantastic illusions. Bashful. Loss of love of life. Restless, excited, very loquacious. Time passes slowly. Thinking difficult in the morning with old people. Dwells on unpleasant things.”

 

Under the heading of Urinary it has another truly awful set of symptoms. If you prefer a more recent (and even more bizarre) discussion of symptoms, then you can read a web page from another Materia Medica by George Vithoulkas at the International Academy of Classical Homeopathy.

 

A drawing of a sperm whale came from Pearson Scott Foresman at Wikimedia Commons.    

 

Can turquoise and other crystals heal fear of public speaking?

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Crystals look pretty and colorful. But can they heal fear? Back on October 4, 2009 I blogged about Crystal Therapy for stage fright? In that post I mentioned a suggestion that you hold a crystal (like Golden Topaz) in your hand, wear it as a pendant, or drink water it had soaked in (gem water or gem essence). Of course there also is crystal massage (the art of rubbing people with pebbles).  

On January 15, 2017 a blog post by Edzard Ernst titled Crystal healing “empowers us to lead a more meaningful life “ quoted a web site called Beliefnet which mentioned that turquoise could calm public speaking nerves. A web page there by Wesley Baines titled 9 Powerful Healing Stones and What They Can Do For You had said:  

“As a healer, turquoise is powerful, giving peace to the spirit and well-being to the body. This stone induces a sense of serenity, keeping physically harmful stress and inflammation at bay. Holding turquoise can bring back focus and restore vitality.

Turquoise is also a stabilizer, and can calm the nerves when working on a difficult problem, or when performing or speaking in public. It is known for its effectiveness in alleviating the fear of flying.”

I searched Google to find where this claim first appeared. A tourist attraction called The Turquoise Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico had a web page about The Healing Powers of Turquoise that said:

“In the world of crystal healing, Turquoise is supposed to be a stone of communication. New Age healers recommend it for people who have a fear of public speaking. They believe it has the ability to make a speaker more eloquent, loving, creative and honest. But it is also improves the mental state overall by increasing all of the following positive mental characteristics: serenity, creativity, empathy, positive thinking, sensitivity, intuition, happiness wisdom all of which result in a calmer state that leads to greater self-realization. It is also considered a stone of friendship. As a communication stone, the New Age believers say that it opens up the connections between friends and allowing love to flow in those communications, which strengthens the friendship bond. Further, they believe it has the power to strengthen convictions, courage and personal power.”

What other crystals have been claimed to help?

Blue lace agate is one. New Moon Beginnings sells an Anger and Stress Relief Gemstone Set where it is described:

“As a support crystal, Blue Lace Agate assists those who fear speaking in public or sharing thoughts and ideas with strangers. It is a great stone for those who communicate for a living, such as workshop directors, lecturers, teachers, or anyone who must connect in a clear, intelligent manner. Blue Lace Agate also tranquilizes and relaxes the mind of executives, and calms stress in postal workers.”

The Natural Healing Shop web page on The properties of Crystals discusses Celestite Blue and Tiger Eye Blue: 

“Celestite is a powerful healing crystal. Bringing mental calm and clarity in the midst of any chaotic circumstance. Celestite can relieve stress, anxiety and obsessive behaviours. Its energy will alleviate any type of stage fright or nervousness. Celestite gives courage to those who suffer from agoraphobia (fear of crowds) or public speaking.” 

“If you are nervous about giving a presentation or speaking in public, keeping a piece of Tumbled Blue Tiger Eye in your pocket can help relax your Throat Chakra, clear any blockages, and form a strong connection with the Brow Chakra, allowing for easier access to the intuition. It enables one to expand their horizons, often leading to better opportunities.”

Hibiscus Moon has a web page on 4 Totally Rockin’ Ways to use Crystals for Fear and Anxiety which mentions Chrysocolla:

“Chrysocolla – this stone has a very feminine & soothing vibration. It gently calms your heart chakra when its beating with fear. It will also give you more confidence when you’re gripped with fear when having to communicate to others your needs or when you simply need some security in social situations of any sort. It’s a great one to keep in your pocket when doing any public speaking.”

Goop has a web page on The 8 Essential Crystals which mentions lapis lazuli:

“Have a fear of public speaking? Use lapis lazuli as your worry stone: Hold the stone in your left hand when practicing your speech, the day of your speech, and when it’s your turn to get up to the mic. Let your anxieties release into the stone.”

How about arranging several types of crystals to form a grid?

Crystal Vaults sells a Conquer Fear Grid Kit  - a set that has three types of crystals to be arranged in a hexagonal pattern as shown above:

“THE FOCUS STONE: Before you can conquer your fear, you must accept it. By owning your thoughts and feelings, you have taken the first step in gaining control. Your Focus Stone will be a Blue Chalcedony Crystal. Its soothing light blue rays will surround you with energies of acceptance, faith, and belief.

THE WAY STONES: You must take the action to defeat your fear, but also have confidence and strength in doing so. Your Way Stones will be Crystal Ruby. Their deep red colors will motivate you to take action and have dedication.

THE DESIRE STONES: Your Desire Stones will be Aventurine. Green Aventurine is a Seeker Transformer. Seeker Transformers are talismans used when the desire is to find a way to transform a part of ones life to a more desirable state.  Its dark green rays will aid you in conquering your fear, and will bring the energies of healing, and growth. “

But they don’t take that concept to the next level, which would be arranging those hexagons in an array to tile a surface (as shown above), an idea you can find discussed on Wikipedia under tessellation. (Squares or equilateral triangles also would work).

Does healing with crystals work, or are we just fooling ourselves?

Unfortunately it is likely that we are fooling ourselves.  On May 28, 2006 Jeffrey Shallit posted about Debunking Crystal Healing at his Recursivity blog. He discussed some experiments done by a psychologist, Christopher French reported in 2001.

Kyle Hill also blogged about those experiment on September 11, 2011 in a post at Science-Based Life titled Crystal Healing: Magical Cure or Just a Rock?

More recently on January 20, 2015 Elizabeth Palermo wrote about Crystal Healing: Stone-Cold Facts About Gemstone Treatments at LiveScience. She described how:

“In 2001, French and his colleagues at Goldsmiths College at the University of London presented a paper at the British Psychological Society Centenary Annual Conference in Glasgow, in which they outlined their study of the efficacy of crystal healing.

For the study, 80 participants were asked to meditate for five minutes while holding either a real quartz crystal or a fake crystal that they believed was real. Before meditating, half of the participants were primed to notice any effects that the crystals might have on them, like tingling in the body or warmth in the hand holding the crystal. 

After meditating, participants answered questions about whether they felt any effects from the crystal healing session. The researchers found that the effects reported by those who held fake crystals while meditating were no different than the effects reported by those who held real crystals during the study. 

Many participants in both groups reported feeling a warm sensation in the hand holding the crystal or fake crystal, as well as an increased feeling of overall well being. Those who had been primed to feel these effects reported stronger effects than those who had not been primed. However, the strength of these effects did not correlate with whether the person in question was holding a real crystal or a fake one. Those who believed in the power of crystals (as measured by a questionnaire) were twice as likely as non-believers to report feeling effects from the crystal.

‘There is no evidence that crystal healing works over and above a placebo effect,’ French told Live Science. ‘That is the appropriate standard to judge any form of treatment. But whether or not you judge crystal healing, or any other form of [complementary and alternative medicine], to be totally worthless depends upon your attitude to placebo effects.’ "

Wikipedia and the Rational Wiki have articles on Crystal Healing that mention some other references.

An image of gem pebbles came from Wikimedia Commons.  

Using the wrong definition can make you look like a stubborn donkey

Back on September 1st I blogged about the importance of careful research in a post titled Don’t open your mouth until you’ve done your research. I just found a great example of what not to do. On August 3rd at his A Daring Adventure web site Tim Brownson blogged about What is social anxiety? And 7 ways to cure it. His highly profane post opens by claiming:

“According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America about 15 million adults in the US suffer from social anxiety.  
I say that’s a total crock of shit.
In my rather arrogant opinion, it’s way, way, higher.
In fact, I’d go as far to say it’s at least 100 million.
You may think that it’s highly arrogant of me to suggest a professional body that’s only purpose is to study anxiety can get it so hopelessly wrong.
But bear with me, and see if you agree when I explain what social anxiety actually is.”

Then he goes off on a tangent about having been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).

Next he gets back to discussing What Is Social Anxiety? and says:

“Rather than give you my opinion of what social anxiety is I’ll quote directly from the Social Anxiety Institute website.
 
‘Social anxiety is the fear of being judged and evaluated negatively by other people, leading to feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, embarrassment, humiliation, and depression.
If a person usually becomes (irrationally) anxious in social situations, but seems better when they are alone, then ‘social anxiety’ may be the problem.’
 
Think about it for a second.
How many people do you know who aren’t bothered about being judged?
Donald Trump maybe?
After that I’m struggling.
And if it bothers them, then by definition that must mean at least one of the above symptoms comes into play.”

What did Tim miss? He skipped one crucial word on that Anxiety and Depression Association of America web page. Their heading says Social Anxiety Disorder (which used to be called Social Phobia), and then lists 15 million, 6.8%. The definition Tim quoted referred just to “social anxiety” which is not the same thing (just about social fear rather than phobia).  

That 6.8% comes from a web page about Social Phobia Among Adults at the National Institute of Mental Health web site. A footnote reveals it is one result from the very detailed National Comorbidity Survey - Replication. That percentage refers to the 12 month prevalence - the answer from asking people if they had a social phobia during the last year. If you had instead asked them about if they ever had a social phobia, you’d get another larger percentage for the lifetime prevalence.

Back in October 2011 I blogged about What’s the difference between a fear and a phobia? In that post I described the DSM-4 definition for social phobia. The Social Anxiety Institute web site has a web page on the newer DSM-5 Definition of Social Anxiety Disorder, which is very similar.  

After that Tim has a section about public speaking fear titled Would You Rather Be Dead?:

“When surveys are done on what people’s greatest fears are, guess what almost always comes out on top? Public speaking.
There was one survey that put public speaking at number one and death at number seven, which lead to an awesome joke from Jerry Seinfeld when he astutely pointed out that most people at a funeral would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.
The fear of public speaking is classic social anxiety and if the Anxiety and Depression Association of America’s figures are correct, that means just over 19 out of 20 people in the USA are happy to give a talk in public.
Like fuck they are!
I think it’s closer to flip those figure and say 19 out of 20 people would be anxious at the thought of standing up in front of 100 people and giving a talk.
When you look at it like that, perhaps my figure of 100 million is actually a conservative estimate?
If you are scared of speaking in public, then you have social anxiety.
If you get anxious at the thought of going to a party where you don’t know anybody, then you have social anxiety.
If the thought of of meeting a person of authority worries you, then you have social anxiety.
If being watched while you undergo a task, even something benign as eating, makes you highly uncomfortable, then you have social anxiety.”

That section about public speaking is nonsense. Before Halloween in 2012 I blogged about how Either way you look at it, public speaking really is not our greatest fear.

In my post titled What’s the difference between a fear and a phobia? I included a bar chart with percentages for lifetime prevalence of both fear and phobia from the National Comorbidity Survey - Replication for various situations including public speaking/performance, meeting new people, talking to people in authority, going to parties, etc. For any social fear the lifetime prevalence is 24.1%, and for any social phobia it’s 12.1%.That’s real data, unlike the 100 million that Tim, to put it politely, pulled out of thin air. 

Rather curiously on October 1st he blogged about how If you don’t think you’re a dumbass, you maybe a dumbass.

An image of a donkey by Carol Highsmith is from the Library of Congress. 

Seth Godin gave an incomplete solution for fear of public speaking. Here is the other part he missed.

One way to approach a fearful situation is like learning to swim. You should wade in from the shallow end of the pool rather than jumping in the deep end. As shown above, you might begin by speaking to a small audience and then gradually move to larger and larger ones. 

On January 26, 2015 Seth Godin blogged about Fear of public speaking. He posted less than 240 words as follows:

“Very few people are afraid of speaking.

It's the public part that's the problem.

What makes it public? After all, speaking to a waiter or someone you bump into on the street is hardly private.

I think we define public speaking as any group large enough or important enough or fraught enough that we're afraid of it.

And that makes the solution straightforward (but not easy). Instead of plunging into these situations under duress, once a year or once a decade, gently stretch your way there.

Start with dogs. I'm not kidding. If you don't have one, go to the local animal shelter and take one for a walk. Give your speech to the dog. And then, if you can, to a few dogs.

Work your way up to a friend, maybe two friends. And then, once you feel pretty dumb practicing with people you know (this is easy!), hire someone on Craigslist to come to your office and listen to you give your speech.

Drip, drip, drip. At every step along the way, there's clearly nothing to fear, because you didn't plunge. It's just one step up from speaking to a schnauzer. And then another step.

Every single important thing we do is something we didn't use to be good at, and in fact, might be something we used to fear.

This is not easy. It's difficult. But that's okay, because it's possible.”

Psychologists call what Seth described (systematic or progressive) desensitization. But, it is just one part of a more effective solution called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. A web page from the National Institute of Mental Health says:

“Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is very useful in treating anxiety disorders. The cognitive part helps people change the thinking patterns that support their fears, and the behavioral part helps people change the way they react to anxiety-provoking situations.”

What Seth described is the behavioral part, but without the cognitive part it may not work very well, if at all. (If you need to start by speaking just to a dog, then you likely need the cognitive part too.)

In his TED talk on What I learned from going blind in space last year Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield described both parts of CBT using fear of spiders as an example. It took him less than three minutes (corresponding to less than 500 words, and starting at 8:30). He said:

“So, what’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done? Maybe it’s spiders. A lot of people are afraid of spiders. I think you should be afraid of spiders. Spiders are creepy, and they got long hairy legs, and spiders like this one, the brown recluse, I mean it’s horrible. If a brown recluse bites you end up with one of these horrible big necrotic things on your leg.  And there might be one right now sitting on the chair behind you in fact, and how do you know? And, so a spider lands on you, and you go through this great spasmy attack because spiders are scary. But then you could say, well is there a brown recluse sitting on the chair beside me or not? I don’t know.

Are there brown recluses here? So, if you actually do the research you find out that in the world there are about 50,000 different types of spiders, and there are about two dozen that are venomous out of 50,000. 

And if you’re in Canada, because of the cold winters here in BC, there’s about 720, 730 types of spiders, and there’s one, one that is venomous and it’s venom isn’t even fatal. it’s just kind of like a nasty sting. And that spider, not only that but that spider has beautiful markings on it. It’s like ‘I’m dangerous,’ I’ve got big a radiation symbol on my back. It’s the black widow.

So, if you’re even slightly careful you can avoid running into the one spider. And it lives close to the ground. When you’re walking along you are never going to go through a spider web where a black widow bites you. Spider webs like this, it doesn’t build those. It builds them down in the corners. It’s the black widow cause the female spider eats the male. It doesn’t care about you.   

So, in fact, the next time you walk into a spider web you don’t need to panic and go with your caveman reaction. The danger is entirely different than the fear.

And, how do you get around it though? How do you change your behavior? Well, next time you see a spider web, have a good look. Make sure it’s not a black widow spider, and  then walk into it.

And then you see another spider web, and walk into that one. It’s just a little bit of fluffy stuff,  it’s not a big deal. And the spider that may come out is no more a threat to you than a ladybug, or a butterfly.   

And then, I guarantee you, if you walk through a hundred spider webs, you will have changed your fundamental human behavior, your caveman reaction. And you will now be able to walk in the park in the morning, and not worry about that spider web. Or into your grandma’s attic, or whatever, or into your own basement. 

And you can apply this to anything.”

The plateau at an audience of about 20 in my graphic represents a series of speeches done in a public speaking class or a Toastmasters club. 

Comparing U.S. and British 2014 YouGov fear surveys

Last month something very unusual happened. YouGov plc conducted fear surveys of adults in both Britain and the U.S. using the exact same set of questions. Those people were asked about the following 13 different fearful situations:

1. Being in a closed space
2. Blood
3. Clowns
4. Crowds
5. Darkness
6. Dogs
7. Flying in an airplane
8. Heights
9. Mice
10. Needles and getting shots
11. Public speaking
12. Snakes
13. Spiders

They were asked if they were:

A) Not afraid at all
B) Not really afraid
C) A little afraid
D) Very afraid

We can compare the results to see how similar or different they are. Before we do this, we need to look at the margins of error, or confidence intervals, which depend on the sample sizes. For the survey in Britain the sample size is 2088, so the margin of error for 95% confidence is plus or minus 2.1%. For the U.S. survey  the sample size is 991 people and the margin of error is  3.1.%. (95% confidence means there is only a 1 in 20 chance that the survey result would vary by this much). If the difference between the results is greater than the sum, 5.2%, it can be considered significant statistically.  

Results for Very Afraid are shown above in a bar chart. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer version).The top five fears for the U.S. [and their difference from the British results] are:

1. Snakes (32%) [11]
2. Heights (24%) [1]
3. Public speaking (20%) [0]
4. Spiders (19%) [1]
5. Being closed in a small space (15%) [1]

Significantly more U.S. adults are very afraid of snakes [11] and flying [7] than their British counterparts.

Results for A Little Afraid are shown above in a second bar chart. Now the top five fears are:

1. Public speaking (36%) [0]
2. Heights (33%) [-2]
3. Snakes (32%) [1]
4. Spiders (29%) [5]
5. Being closed in a small space (27%) [-2]

Significantly more U.S. Adults are a little afraid of flying [7] and darkness [8] than their British counterparts.

We also can add the percentages for A Little Afraid to those for Very Afraid to produce impressively large percentages for Total Afraid, as shown above in a third bar chart. The top five fears are:

1. Snakes (64%) [12]
2. Heights (57%) [-1]
3. Public speaking (56%) [0]
4. Spiders (48%) [6]
5. Being closed in a small space (42%) [-1]

Significantly more U.S. adults are afraid of snakes [12]. spiders [6], flying [14] and darkness [9] than their British counterparts.

Very curiously, the same percentages in both countries were afraid of public speaking:

Very Afraid: 20%
A Little Afraid: 36%
Total Afraid: 56%

The cartoon was adapted from one in Puck back in 1901.

British survey done for hypnotherapist Joseph Clough found the top five phobias were heights, spiders, social situations, confined spaces and crowds. Flying was sixth, and speaking in public was seventh

Back on June 9, 2008  an article in the Daily Mail titled From Spiders to Open Spaces, the Fears That Make Millions of Us Shudder reported some results from a British survey of phobias in a sample of over a thousand people commissioned by celebrity hypnotherapist Joseph Clough. They mentioned that:

“The most prevalent is fear of heights, or acrophobia, affecting 28 per cent of those polled, followed by arachnophobia, or fear of spiders, which afflicts 22 per cent."

But, they didn’t mention percentages for the rest of the top ten. On June 15th, in an article titled Our Phobias Are Reaching New Heights, the Mirror News listed the top ten, but without showing percentages. 

A press release on June 1, 2010 at 10Yetis provided the percentages I’ve shown above in a bar chart. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer view). Dying was eighth, germs were ninth, strangers were tenth, and vomit was eleventh. But, they didn’t give a percentage for open spaces. Neither did other press coverage on the media page at Mr. Clough’s web site.   

This survey is another one to bring up when someone tells you that public speaking always comes first. 

Spouting Nonsense: July 2013 Toastmaster magazine article fumbles fears and phobias

Toastmasters International claims that it is:

 “a world leader in communication and leadership development.”

The July 2013 issue of their Toastmaster magazine had a brief article on page 8 titled FACTS WORTH KNOWING The Common Fear of Public Speaking. But some of them aren’t facts, and they aren’t worth knowing. The text says:

“Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, is believed to be the most common type of social phobia. Some experts estimate that three out of four people have some anxiety prior to public speaking.”

Glossophobia is the most common fear, according to speech-topics-help.com. It lists the top five phobias as:

1. Glossophobia: fear of public speaking
2. Necrophobia: fear of death
3. Arachnophobia: fear of spiders and other arachnids
4. Achluophobia, scotophobia and myctophobia: fear of darkness
5. Acrophobia: fear of heights.

If your fear of public speaking interferes with your daily life, you might suffer from glossophobia. MayoClinic.com says that with preparation and persistence, anyone can overcome this fear. The website endorses the Toastmasters program as a means of support for people challenged by public speaking.

Did you know? A video in the Toastmasters Time-tested Communication Tips series titled ‘Managing Fear’ shares methods for managing speaking anxiety. To watch it, visit  www.toastmasters.org /videos and click ‘View gallery 2.’ ”

The best thing in this article is that it references a video on Managing Fear, which you can find here on YouTube. That video summarizes advice from their Better Speaker Series publication on Controlling Your Fear. But they also should have referred to an article by Matt Abrahams, Know Thy Fear, in the April 2011 issue of Toastmaster.   

The next best thing in the article is that it points out a Mayo Clinic article, which actually was titled How can I overcome my fear of public speaking and written by Dr. Daniel K. Hall Flavin. I blogged about an earlier version of that article back in 2009. Dr. Flavin doesn’t just mention Toastmasters. He also discusses medication and seeing a psychological counselor.   

The worst thing in this article is that it opens by fumbling and failing to explain that there is a big difference between a fear and a phobia. A phobia is more severe - it’s a fear with a capital F.  As is shown above via a Venn diagram, a phobia is a fear that also is excessive, persistent, and interfering. (See Table 1 from this recent article about social anxiety disorder).

The second worst thing in this article is it wastes a third of the space with a silly graphic of top five phobias (really fears) taken from the somewhat dubious Fear of Public Speaking Statistics Factsheet web page at Jim Arthur Peterson’s Speech Topics Help web site. Lots of Toastmasters will be impressed by these seven words with -phobia suffixes. They should not be.

Are those seven words all common enough to be found in serious dictionaries, like Merriam-Webster and Oxford? No, as shown above only three are. Also, none of his three terms for fear of the dark appear. (Myctophobia might be a typo for Nyctophobia, which is in Merriam-Webster as abnormal fear of darkness).        

Are those seven  -phobia words useful?, Does using them in a search lead you to relevant information in medical or health databases, or do they instead just sent you down blind alleys? As shown above, most are not at all helpful. Just acrophobia and arachnophobia really are useful.

To judge their usefulness I searched both them and their common English equivalent phrases in two pairs of databases. One was the PubMed and PubMed Central medical article databases. The other was both the Consumer Edition and the Nursing and Academic Edition of the Health Source databases on the web site for my friendly local public library. 

As is shown above, acrophobia is a useful term since is occurs about as commonly as the phrase fear of heights.

The Fear of Public Speaking Statistics Factsheet at Speech Topics Help claims that glossophobia is the medic (sic) term for fear of public speaking. But, as is shown above, that term doesn’t appear at all in PubMed, and only once (falsely) at PubMed Central.

Toastmaster magazine was spouting nonsense, and so I have reluctantly awarded them a special floating globe Spoutly.


UPDATE August 27, 2014

I forgot to mention that article chose to use the phobias list from Speech Topics Help, but to ignore the pie chart listing just 19% of people having glossophobia. It's certainly less impressive than claiming 75% (three out of four people).  

How many Americans are scared of networking situations? An infographic showing both fears and phobias for meeting new people and talking with strangers

The infographic shown above is based on two recent and very serious magazine articles reporting on large surveys of U.S. adults and adolescents. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer view). Both surveys asked two questions related to networking - about meeting new people and talking with strangers.

For adults, meeting new people was feared by 16.8%, and talking with strangers was feared by 13.1%. For the more serious phobias, meeting new people freaked out 9.7%, and talking with strangers freaked out 8.1%. For adolescents, meeting new people was feared by 23.6%, and talking with strangers was feared by 22.2%.

The first article by A. M. Ruscio et al. is titled Social Fears and Social Phobia in the United States: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. You can read the full text here. I blogged about it back in October 2011 in a post titled What’s the Difference Between A Fear and A Phobia? That post also contains a bar chart for all the fears and phobias shown by Ruscio et al. in their Table 1. 

The second article by J. G. Green et al. is titled Validation of the Diagnoses of Panic Disorder and Phobic Disorders in the US National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent (NCS-A) Supplement. You can read the full text here. I blogged about it back in June 2012 in a post titled What Social Situations Scare American Adolescents, and What Are Their Top 20 Fears? That post also contains a bar chart for all the fears shown by Green et al. in their Table 4. 

For adults, meeting new people was feared by 16.8%, and talking with strangers was feared by 13.1%. Where do these fears rank compared with other social situations? Meeting new people was ranked third, and talking to strangers was seventh. Public speaking/performance was first (21.2%), followed by speaking up in a meeting/ class (19.5%). Talking to people in authority (14.7%) was fourth, an important exam/interview (14.0%) was fifth, and going to parties (13.4%) was sixth.

How many U.S. adults fear meeting new people? According to the 2010 Census, the total population was 305,745,538 people, but only 234,564,071 were 18 years and older. Multiplying that by 0.168, there are about 39.4 million people with that fear. 

For adolescents, meeting new people was feared by 23.6%, and talking with strangers  was feared by 22.2%. Where do these fears rank compared with other social situations? Meeting new people was ranked fourth, and talking to strangers was fifth. Performing for an audience was first (35.8%), followed by speaking in class (24.9%), and a situation that could be embarrassed (24.6%).  

How do these survey results for adults compare with some statistics cited in books by networking experts? Back in 2005 Debra Fine published The Fine Art of Small Talk. On page 19 of that book she said:

“Do you know the biggest social fear in America? It’s public speaking. And do you know the second? It’s fear of starting a conversation with a stranger. So remember when you walk into a luncheon or a cocktail party, most people there are scared to death to talk to you.”

I’m not sure where she got that ranking, but second is a lot higher than seventh (for talking with strangers). In an article about her book in the Houston Chronicle on December 1, 2005 she was quoted as saying that five out of eight of us (62.5%) are afraid to talk to strangers. The 13.1% shown above in the infographic is about 4.8 times smaller than her statistic. 

In 2010 Frances Kay published Successful Networking. On page 43 of her book (and page 22 of her 2004 book Brilliant Business Connections) she said:

“Don’t worry if you have butterflies; research shows that over 90 per cent of people feel fear about walking into a room full of strangers.”

This year Signe A. Dayhoff published her How to Speak Without Fear Small Talk Course, in which she said:

“However, a survey done in the 1980s showed that up to 95 percent of the U.S. population reported that it was truly uncomfortable talking with strangers.”

These percentages are almost ludicrously high compared with those reported by Ruscio et al. The last column of Table 1 in that article reports percentages of fear for people with a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder, which were 80.5% for meeting new people and 66.7% for talking with strangers.

How scary is public speaking or performance? A better infographic showing both fears and phobias

Back on March 11th Miami Public Speakers posted a web page containing a Fear of Public Speaking Infographic (shown above). It’s very pretty, and has been reposted elsewhere many times. However, it was based on bogus statistics (which I have crossed out in yellow) so it is not very meaningful. Also it uses the silly pseudo-technical term glossophobia. 

A bar chart in my better infographic shown above is more useful since it is based on two recent and very serious magazine articles. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer view). For adults, they show the percentages for both fear and phobia of public speaking/performance in the United States, nine developed countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, and the United States) and eleven developing countries (Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Colombia, India, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Romania, South Africa, Ukraine). For U.S. adults, 21.2% have a fear and only 10.7% have a phobia, both of which are drastically lower than the 74% shown in the Miami Public Speakers infographic.

The first article by A. M. Ruscio et al. is titled Social Fears and Social Phobia in the United States: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. You can read the full text here. I blogged about it back in October 2011 in a post titled What’s the Difference Between A Fear and A Phobia? That post contains a bar chart for all the fears shown by Ruscio et al. in their Table 1. 

The second article by D. J. Stein et al. is titled Subtyping Social Anxiety in Developed and Developing Countries. You can read the full text here. I blogged about it back in August 2012 in a post titled Surveys show that public speaking isn’t feared by the majority of adults in nine developed and eleven developing countries. That post contains a pair of bar charts for all the fears shown by Stein et al. in their Table 2. 

A poll done in Providence found 41% of adults feared public speaking

Halloween is coming in three weeks, so it’s time to scare people with surveys about their fears. I ran across results from a telephone poll of 500 adults done by SurveyUSA for WLNE-TV in the Providence, Rhode Island area back on November 10, 2005. They asked just this single question:

“Do you personally have a fear of public speaking?”

in with five about sex offenders and another topic. 

Results are shown above in a bar chart. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer version). 41% feared public speaking, 58% didn’t, and 1% weren’t sure. The sample was 53% female, and 46% of them feared public speaking, while only 37% of the males did. There was not much effect of age. 42% of those aged 18 to 34 feared speaking, 40% aged 35 to 54 feared it, and 42% of those age 55 and older feared it. Ethnically the sample was 87% white, and 41% feared public speaking. Of the 6% Hispanic (just 30 people), only 31% feared public speaking. (The rest of that sample was 4% black, and 3% other).

The 41% found in this survey very close to the 40% found by the 2001 US Gallup poll. I am not sure why this poll data was released on Veteran’s Day of 2005.

When I think of Providence, I think of the fictional town of Quahog based on it, which is the setting for the adult TV cartoon show Family Guy.

Public speaking was the most common fear for twin women in Virginia

Back in 1992 the Archives of General Psychiatry published an article written by K. Kendler, M. C. Neale, R. C. Kessler, A. C. Heath, and L. J. Eaves titled Genetic Epidemiology of Phobias in Women (Interrelationship of agoraphobia, social phobia, situational phobia, and simple phobia). You can find an abstract at PubMed, or read the full text here.

They asked a sample of 2163 women who were in the Virginia Twin Registry a series of 16 questions about four categories of unreasonable fears that were severe enough to interfere with their lives (phobias), and listed their results in Table 1. I’ve shown those results above in a bar chart. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer view). Those fears were grouped into four categories:

AGORAPHOBIA
Being in Crowds - 6.6%  
Going out of the house alone - 4.1%
Being in open spaces 0.9%

ANIMAL PHOBIA
Snakes - 5.5%
Spiders - 3.3%
Bats - 1.6%
Insects - 1.0%

SITUATIONAL PHOBIA
Other high places - 7.4%
Airplanes - 4.7%
Other closed places - 3.7%
Bridges - 3.1%
Tunnels - 2.9%

SOCIAL PHOBIA
Giving a speech - 9.4%
Meeting new people - 4.4%
Using public bathrooms - 1.9%
Eating in public - 1.6%

The most common fear was giving a speech (social), followed by other high places (situational), being in crowds (agoraphobia), snakes (animals), and airplanes (situational).

They did a very detailed analysis, which I’m not going to try to summarize here, to find influences of genetic and environmental risk factors,. An image of the Kessler Twins came from Wikimedia Commons.

Performing or giving a talk in front of an audience is the most common social fear for people in the Canadian military

Between May and December 2002 there was a survey on social fears done on a sample of people on active duty in the Canadian military. There were 5155 from the Regular force and 3286 from the Reserve, for a total of 8441. The total responding was about 80%, or 6842. Results were analyzed and eventually published in an article by Amber A. Mather, Murray B. Stein, and Jitender Sareen in the October 2010 issue of the Journal of Psychiatric Research and titled Social Anxiety Disorder and Social Fears in the Canadian Military: prevalence, comorbidity, impairment, and treatment seeking. You can read an abstract here. Table 2 listed how prevalent 13 fears were. Those results are shown in the following bar chart. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer version).

Performing/giving a talk in front of an audience was the most common fear (17.3%), followed by speaking up in a meeting/class (15.7%), meeting new people (15.0%), talking to people in authority (13.3%), and taking important exam/interviewing for job, even though prepared (13.0%). Then came almost a tie between attending parties/social gatherings (11.2%) and talking with people you don’t know well. Another tie followed for entering a room where others are already present (10.7%) and working while someone watches (10.7%). Going on a date was tenth (10.2%), immediately followed by expressing disagreement to people you don’t know well (9.8%) and finally there were writing/eating/drinking while someone watches (5.0%) and using a bathroom away from home/public bathroom (4.3%). Some other social/performance situation was feared by 15.0%, and 19.6% had at least one social fear.    

The two most common fears were the same as those found in a previous article on Canadian civilians. Fear of performing/giving a talk in front of an audience (17.3%) was a couple percent higher than the 15.1% found by Stein, Torgrud and Walker for the general public in Alberta and Manitoba. Fear of speaking up in a meeting/class (15.7%) was slightly higher than the 14.4% found by the Stein, Torgrud and Walker article, which I’ve previously blogged about back in 2009.  

The image of Canadian Forces came from here.

Public speaking was ranked sixth by a survey of workplace phobias in Singapore

On July 24th the JobsCentral Community had a post by Jonathan Tay titled Survey Results: Tales of the night (shift). Singapore workers share ghostly encounters at work. It was timed to precede the month-long Hungry Ghost Festival, which began on August 7th. That online survey was done from May 22nd to June 23rd of 2013 and covered 3,568 workers in Singapore aged 16 and over.

Most of it was about supernatural encounters, but it also discussed real workplace phobias, as shown above. (Click on the bar chart for a larger, clearer view).The top five most common phobias were not meeting performance goals/targets (51.1%), followed by offending the boss (46.3%), missing deadlines (41.8%), offending colleagues (31.5%), and having to make crucial decisions (22.9%). Public speaking/presentation (21.8%) was sixth, which contradicts the frequent claim that it universally is the number one phobia.

Almost two-thirds (65.1%) of the unexplained events involved seeing ghostly figures or shadows. Others in the top five included equipment starting to operate on its own (12.3%), unexplained shifting of items (8.5%), doors opening or shutting on their own (5.2%), and possessed co-workers (3.3%). 

Almost a third (32.5%) of the unexplained events took place in washrooms. Others in the top five included meeting rooms (15.1%), corners or storerooms (tied for 7.9%), and corridors, stairways, or a particular workstation (a three way tie for 7.1% each).