At the Rule The Room Public Speaking blog on March 20th Jason Teteak posted on the Top 10 Fears of Public Speaking which he claimed were the fears of failure, inadequacy, leadership, competition, embarrassment, selling, people, futility, self, and success.
He claimed that:
“Everyone has heard the statistics:
The fear of public speaking is worse than the fear of death.
.…A Gallup poll confirmed that the greatest fear of 40
percent of Americans is public speaking.”
But that poll he talked about without linking to NEVER asked
about our greatest fears. It was reported in an article by Geoffrey Brewer on March
19, 2001 titled Snakes Top List of Americans’ Fears where the question was:
“Everybody
has fears about different things. But some are more afraid of certain things
than others. I'm going to read a list of some of these fears. For each one,
please tell me whether you are afraid of it, or not. How about public speaking
in front of an audience?”
and the top three answers (most common fears) were:
“A recent Gallup poll that asked adults
what they were afraid of reveals that more people -- 51% -- fear snakes than
any other suggested possibility, including speaking in public in front of an
audience (40%) and heights (36%).”
How about the fear of public speaking being worse than
death? Well, I blogged about how the 1973 Bruskin and 1993 Bruskin-Goldring
surveys found the fear of public speaking was more common than the fear of
death – not worse. What Jason should fear about public speaking is that his
research about it was both inadequate and embarrassing.
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