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posted by martyb on Sunday October 16 2016, @08:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the The-only-thing-we-have-to-fear-is... dept.

Chapman University recently completed its third annual Chapman University Survey of American Fears (2016). The survey asked respondents about 65 fears across a broad range of categories including fears about the government, crime, the environment, the future, technology, health, natural disasters, as well as fears of public speaking, spiders, heights, ghosts and many other personal anxieties.

In addition to the set of fears examined in previous waves, the survey team took a closer look at two fear related phenomena: Americans' beliefs in conspiracy theories and fear of Muslims, sometimes referred to as "Islamophobia."

In its third year, the annual Chapman University Survey of American Fears included more than 1,500 adult participants from across the nation and all walks of life. The 2016 survey data is organized into five basic categories: personal fears, conspiracy theories, terrorism, natural disasters, paranormal fears, and fear of Muslims.

The 2016 survey shows that the top 10 things Americans fear the most are:

  • Corruption of government officials (same top fear as 2015)
  • Terrorist attacks
  • Not having enough money for the future
  • Being a victim of terror
  • Government restrictions on firearms and ammunition (new)
  • People I love dying
  • Economic or financial collapse
  • Identity theft
  • People I love becoming seriously ill
  • The Affordable Health Care Act/"Obamacare"

http://phys.org/news/2016-10-americans-annual-survey-american.html

A comprehensive list of the all the fears is available from The Chapman Survey on American Fears 2016.

A video is also available at: https://youtu.be/Rr0XAFbe8b8

Previously:
What Americans Fear Most (2014)


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday October 16 2016, @09:52PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Sunday October 16 2016, @09:52PM (#414975) Journal

    As linked in the summary, in 2014 there was a list of "top fears" too. They were:

    1. Walking alone at night
    2. Identity theft
    3. Safety on the internet
    4. Being a mass shooting victim
    5. Public speaking

    These fears seem rather simple, personal, and parochial compared to this new list a mere two years later. Now our top 10 is propagated with not one but TWO terrorism fears, fear of government, corruption, and big government actions, and -- in a striking reversal -- we're apparently more afraid of gun control than being a shooting victim.

    Hmm... does two years make such a big difference? (And before you blame this on "The Donald," last year's list isn't much different from this year's.)

    I didn't try to track down the original 2014 survey details, but the summaries I've found of 2014 does note a difference in methodology. In 2014, there were FOUR main categories of questions about fear: personal fears, fear of crime, fear of natural disasters, and "fear factors." That last one seems more about traits of fearful people than the actual fears, so there were really three categories. Not surprisingly, the top fears of 2014 therefore were "personal fears" like public speaking and "fear of crime" like walking alone and identity theft.

    Now, in 2016, our survey has five [sic] categories of fear questions: "personal fears, conspiracy theories, terrorism, natural disasters, paranormal fears, and fear of Muslims." (I'm not certain here, but that pretty much sounds like six, rather than five.) Anyhow, two of these main categories are related to terrorism fears (terrorism and "fear of Muslims"), so is it any wonder that those are now popping up in the top 10? And if you start asking questions about conspiracy theories, you'll probably get more responses from people who fear government corruption, gun control, full-scale economic collapse, and "Obamacare" (especially if they called it that).

    We all know that the form of the survey will affect the response. Sure, it could be that maybe they didn't include questions about some of these in 2014, so they weren't even there for people to rate. Or, it could be that when you're asking people a bunch of questions about "what you're afraid of" and there are like 25 questions saying, "Do you fear Muslims? Do you fear terrorists? Do you fear Muslim terrorists? Do you fear a terrorist in a house? Do you fear a terrorist with a mouse?" etc., that maybe people start saying, "Yeah... they're asking me all these questions about terrorists... maybe there is something to worry about here..." (By the way, I couldn't find the detailed survey methodology on the website for 2016 yet -- they only have the 2015 version, so it's tough to tell how many questions like this there actually were, but since these are two of the five (six?) main categories, one has to assume there are multiple questions on them.)

    And then there are concerns about the way questions are worded -- just to pull one question I saw out of the 2015 survey (which is actual posted in full on their website): "Thinking about the Federal Government in Washington D.C., how afraid are you of the following? (1) Government use of drones within the U.S., (2) The Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare, (3) Corrupt Government Officials, (4) Government restrictions on firearms and ammunition." I can't remember the exact name for this type of problematic survey question, but basically what they do is bring up the U.S. government, and the only thing they ask about are these things. Everybody's got some beef with the government (Congress has a perennial approval rating that never seems to get much more than 25%). So it is any surprise that almost everyone would check off their favorite complaint if they could find something like it among these four? Even if you aren't really afraid of gun control, if you're a Republican who supports gun rights, and this one resonates the most with you of those four, you'll probably check that one off as "strongly fear" or whatever... and it suddenly ends up in the top 10%.

    TL;DR -- This is really a Top 10 of fears that the researchers decided to include and structured questions and categories that led survey-takers to pay more attention to (and likely weight more strongly). I'd like to see if they did a survey that just had a list of 100 fears or whatever number, with no extra text, and just let people rank freely. Would these "Top 10" still be the same? What if they had a different structure where every person was shown a random selection of 25 fears out of those 100 in random order? Would they see different fear rankings from those who saw 5 questions about Muslims and terrorists, compared to only 1?

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 16 2016, @11:49PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday October 16 2016, @11:49PM (#415013) Journal

    There's some consistency, but not complete consistency. Check the PDF:

    https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/research-centers/babbie-center/_files/alphabetical-list-of-fears.pdf [chapman.edu]

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @03:02AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @03:02AM (#415069)

      23.8% fear illegal immigration, and 25% fear insects. DJT could have kicked off his campaign with a "dog whistle":

      When Mexico sends its bugs, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending insects that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing pathogens. They’re bringing famine. They’re pests. And some, I assume, are beneficial insects.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @01:17AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @01:17AM (#415039)

    I put this in my personal queue and haven't gotten around to submitting it.
    (It's not especially time-sensitive, so I figured I could wait for low ebb in the queue.)
    Now seems an apt time to include it.

    The 20 Things That Are Most Likely to Kill You (Hint: Not Sharks or Terrorists) [alternet.org]

    20. Fireworks
    Your chances of dying from a fireworks accident are 1 in 615,000
    19. Tsunami - 1 in 500,000
    18. Asteroid - 1 in 500,000
    17. Dog attack - 1 in 148,000
    16. Earthquake - 1 in 132.000
    15. Poisonous bites or stings
    14. Lightning - 1 in 84,000
    13. Tornado
    12. Flood
    11. Airplane crash - 1 in 20,000
    10. Drowning
    9. Bike accident
    8. Fire - 1 in 1,100
    7. Guns - 1 in 325
    6. Falling - 1 in 250
    5. Suicide - 1 in 120
    4. Vehicle accident - 1 in 100
    3. Stroke - 1 in 23
    2. Cancer - 1 in 7
    1. Heart disease - 1 in 5

    .
    As for the fears survey, FatPhil mentioned the small sample size.
    I also always want to know how many people they contacted who said, "Take your survey and jam it".

    aristarchus also mentioned Chapman University (in the City of Orange in Orange County, CA).
    That is a very superstitious county.
    A third of residents claim to be Catholic.
    (It also used to be very Republican but that's been undergoing strong changes.)

    Chapman University is 3 blocks west of the traffic circle at Glassell and 1 block north of Chapman Ave. [googleapis.com]
    Keep going on Chapman Ave. west, past the "Orange Crush" freeway interchange, [googleapis.com] till you get to Lewis St., [googleapis.com] and you will be at the Crystal Cathedral. [googleapis.com]

    That is a GIANT church (you can actually see it quite a distance off) and it is known worldwide from being on TeeVee weekly for years and years.
    Actually, the Protestants went broke after the pastor croaked and they had to sell the thing.
    The Catholics bought it and renamed it Christ Cathedral.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @03:05AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 17 2016, @03:05AM (#415071)

      I know someone who wasn't killed* in a fireworks mishap.

      * just blinded and maimed