Chapman University has initiated the first comprehensive nationwide study on what strikes fear in Americans in the first of what is a planned annual study. According to the Chapman poll, the number one fear in America today is walking alone at night.
The Chapman Survey on American Fears included 1,500 participants from across the nation and all walks of life. Underscoring Chapman's growth and emergence in the sciences, the research team leading this effort pared the information down into four basic categories: personal fears, crime, natural disasters and fear factors.
The survey shows that the top five things Americans fear the most are:
1) Walking alone at night
2) Becoming the victim of identity theft
3) Safety on the Internet
4) Being the victim of a mass/random shooting
5) Public speaking
http://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/research-centers/babbie-center/survey-american-fears.aspx
Related Stories
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)
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:00PM
Q ... about having my email, phone records, and internet use tracked by government agencies
Valid -1 Refused 35 2.2 2.2 2.2
1 Very Concerned 315 20.1 20.1 22.3
2 Concerned 406 25.8 25.8 48.1
3 Somewhat Conc. 411 26.1 26.1 74.2
4 Not Concerned 406 25.8 25.8 100.0
Total 1573 100.0 100.0
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:02PM
How safe do you feel about walking alone at night
-1 Refused 34 2.2 2.2 2.2
1 Very Safe 132 8.4 8.4 10.6
2 Safe 526 33.4 33.4 44.0
3 Somewhat Safe 562 35.7 35.7 79.7
4 Not at All Safe 319 20.3 20.3 100.0
Total 1573 100.0 100.0
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:45PM
If anyone else is wondering, buswolley seems to being pulling these figures from this PDF, [chapman.edu] which probably should have been linked in the summary. It's a lot more informative than the infographics.
The columns of numbers he's listing (in order of left to right) correspond to frequency (actual number of responses), percent, valid percent (which is supposed to exclude invalid or missing answers, but I guess it includes refusals to answer), and cumulative percent. I don't know shit about statistics, so I can't tell you what a cumulative percentage is. I'm guessing that they're averaging the percent with a percent from previous poll(s), but I could be totally wrong about that.
(Score: 2) by b on Thursday October 23 2014, @10:49PM
Cumulative percent is just the running total of the previous percents.
i.e. if question 1 is 5%, then the cumulative percent for this question is 5%.
If question 2 is 3%, then the cumulative percent for this question is 8%.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday October 23 2014, @11:40PM
Oh. I typed out a pretty long comment asking for clarification before realising what you meant. Durp.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bucc5062 on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:06PM
According to most politicians and Fox News, I must be afraid of
1 - Terrorists
2 - Ebola
3 - Terrorists with Ebola
4 - Illegal Immigrants
5 - The government
Though 5 is confusing when it comes from politicians. Aren't they the government or is it Wall St these days, I'm never sure.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:23PM
Let me fix that for you. According to Fox News, you shall fear:
1 - The democrats/liberals in the government
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government taking away your freedoms
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government wasting away your money
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government acting like power-mad autocrats
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government being powerless wimps
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government enabling terrorists, whether domestic, international or out-of-reach
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government allowing illegals for political gain
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government killing your job
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government threatening the influence of your religion (but only if you're Christian)
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government not embracing conservative views
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government doing war abroad wrong
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government doing peace abroad wrong
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government listening to allies
2 - The democrats/liberals in the government not listening to allies
3 - Violent street thugs, probably because some democrat/liberal is too soft on them
4 - Ebola, because some democrat/liberal out there is killing the best heath system in the world
5 - People detained in Gitmo, whether cleared for release or evil masterminds which a SuperMax couldn't handle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @06:24PM
FTFY
Now I feel like I need to go wash my mind with bleach. Yick!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday October 23 2014, @09:35PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Interesting) by calzone on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:54PM
These are all ridiculous.
Americans should be afraid of
Diet and mass-production
Social pressure and factors that cause us to make unhealthy life choices
Stress and working too much
Bad habits
Lack of time, space, opportunity and will to exercise
Willfull, auto-cultural-brainwashing
Our politicians being afraid they can't live without continuing to be a politician
Time to leave Soylent News [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:27PM
Totally. People run around in fear that unlikely bad events will happen to them (seriously, "walking alone at night"? WTF?), while not giving a second thought to the bad events that are happening to them right now.
I believe the Ebola epidemic should be taken seriously; but I can't believe that there are people willing to discuss and argue the topic for hours on Facebook and message boards, yet don't have the time or energy for a discussion about negative parts (pick yer favorite whipping post soylentils) of our culture.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:40PM
What they should fear is the slow but deliberate train-ride straight to 1984. Death is the only way off this train-ride. You can look forward to government-induced poverty, surveillance invasive to the most granular level possible to ensure maximum obedience, and never-ending war in which a nebulous enemy changes day-to-day but ultimately remains the same.
If you think we're not on that path just because we're not yet there, then you're one naive son of a bitch. It is a very real possibility that you will have to choose between death and a lifetime of enslavement within your own lifetime. If you are younger you'll never have the resources to own a house, or raise children, or build up a retirement like everybody promise you would when you were a child. If you're older and have some or all of those things then you'd better hope you die before the security state takes complete control of your own life and possessions as well as the lives of your children.
Of course, it is possible that everybody could turn this all around, but they're too busy getting pig-fat with their McGreaseburgers and staying indoors on Facebook being afraid of the "epidemics" and bogeymen du-jour as well as everything else in the real-world.
Yep, we're fucked.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday October 23 2014, @10:32PM
On a personal level, my fears are:
1. Automobile accident leading to death and/or disability.
2. Down's Syndrome and other birth defects
3. household toxins, such as bisphenol A, probably lots of other plastics, phthalates, formaldehyde, insecticides and herbicides, and whatever asbestos, lead, and mercury is still lurking around.
4. Heart disease and cancer
On the toxins, we have an idea of their dangers, but these fool industrial leaders do all they can to obscure the issues so they can keep peddling their wares. This willful ignorance is what makes things so scary. We have flooded our homes and food with all kinds of novel chemicals that have not been thoroughly tested for their effects on animals. Today, no one would even think of manufacturing a watch with a radium dial. The public knows very well how dangerous radioactive substances can be. (Unfortunately, that awareness was not enough to prevent Fukushima.) But we think nothing of chugging drinks from plastic cups, and worse, heating food in plastic lined containers. Teflon cookware and naphtha (Energine cleaning fluid) are gone, but there are many other troubling substances. BPA is not the only plastic that disrupts endocrine systems. Bisphenol S also does so, and the rest of the bisphenols ought to be given a hard look. It may be that plastics are the primary cause of the obesity epidemic. Some dangerous substances could be so useful that they are worth the dangers, but we can't have an honest discussion about it.
On an international level, I worry about:
1. Climate Change
2. anti-intellectualism and the propaganda that supports it.
3. Nuclear war
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday October 24 2014, @06:35AM
You believe in reincarnation? Because otherwise there's no way you could acquire birth defects in the future.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @07:51AM
He's worried about his potential children, clearly.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday October 24 2014, @04:08PM
Exactly. And not just mine. For a variety of reasons (lack of money, student loans, building a career), many people are waiting until their 40s to start families. That increases all kinds of risks.
To add to the fun are people like the pro-lifers. They fly in the face of what we should be doing. We need choice more than ever to offset those risks. If the pro-lifers don't like that, then they should put some effort towards changing our policies so those people who want to can more easily start families at a younger age. Don't have big families, keep it down to 2 children and an occasional 3rd. Just don't hinder starting a little younger, that's all.
It's ironic how those who believe life is so precious do much to make life really cheap. What's the quickest way to overpopulate? No abortions, no contraceptives, and no sex education, or worse, factually incorrect sex education, and a patriarchal society, like Afghanistan. And definitely no "one child" policies as in China. About all they do to slow population growth is insist on abstinence until marriage, and proper marriages have to be horrendously expensive affairs. They have no good answer to the fact that keeping the young in the dark and relying on authority (no sex, and no explanation-- we insist you blindly obey because we're your parents and the Bible says you should obey your parents) to keep teens, the age at which people are the most adventurous and rebellious, in line does not work much. We could overpopulate enough that there would be no other choice. Too many mouths to feed. Some people would have to die, and the only choice is how: war, famine, or something else. In that situation, life would be so cheap it is of negative value. War is becoming an ever more perilous choice. Rwanda could engage in total war without killing the whole world because they simply didn't have nukes. Better to avoid overpopulation than to charge blindly forward, blithely oblivious to the consequences.. Social conservatives would push us in the direction of constant overpopulation and war to relieve it, without ever really understanding that's where they're taking us all. When confronted, they're quick to mouth denial that they want to start wars, but the possibility has a kind of sick glamor to them, the way they talk of a "clash of civilizations" and the "end times", and their pitifully small time frames of mere thousands of years. I would definitely prefer that we all restrain ourselves and live peacefully within our means. There's no external reason why we can't do that, perhaps for millions of years. But I fear some among us will put that option out of reach.
Seems I switched fears from Down's Syndrome to anti-intellectualism and nuclear war. Well, there are a lot of connections. I am afraid of nuclear war not in isolation, but more as the result of desperation brought on through reckless social custom. Other social customs are currently pushing would be parents to start at an older age. And much that is bad in those customs arises from gross stupidity that a bit more respect for wisdom, intelligence, and science might have prevented.
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Friday October 24 2014, @01:44AM
coincidentally, was listening to this [youtube.com] while reading your comment. Seemed appropriate.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:52PM
Where are gays and libruls in that list?
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Thursday October 23 2014, @08:29PM
You may have missed the memo, but gays are okay now with the GOP. As long as they toe the line that is otherwise they are just RINOs (or non-TPers).
GOPers don't fear liburls for they think weH^H^they are to stupid to do any real harm. That is why the need to be in charge, to help take care of usH^H^ those stupid libruls.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Friday October 24 2014, @04:05PM
Perhaps I am too white to scare them. They tend to only go crazy for brown people.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @02:26AM
Should "commies" feature in there somewhere?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @03:13AM
Only if your comment fell out of a time warp from the 1950s.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:18PM
They are afraid of safety on the internet?
I would rather be afraid of a lack of safety! ;-)
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:39PM
Actually, that was the only point I could agree to. Safety in the internet means total control, total lack of privacy etc. For me, that would be one of my biggest fears.
The other points are too unlikely to seriously bother me.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @06:37PM
They are afraid of safety on the internet?
I would rather be afraid of a lack of safety! ;-)
I am afraid of pedants on the internet.
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:20PM
Spiders.
how are they missing huge hairy man eating spiders?
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:28PM
I know spiders are not insects or dogs but
PHOBIA_ANIMALS [Bugs, snakes, dogs, or any other animal/insect] How afraid are you of the following?
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Valid -1 Refused 58 3.7 3.7 3.7
1 Very Afraid 114 7.3 7.3 11.0
2 Afraid 234 14.9 14.9 25.9
3 Somewhat Afraid 600 38.2 38.2 64.0
4 Not Afraid At All 566 36.0 36.0 100.0
Total 1573 100.0 100.0
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:29PM
A shutdown of air traffic control.
Seriously! Just look at how swiftly Congress, in an unusual an heroic bipartisan effort, stepped in to address the supreme American fear of air traffic gridlock, just as they were shutting down the government and flying home.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Taibhsear on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:57PM
As a huge hairy man, this is of great concern to me.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday October 23 2014, @09:37PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by keplr on Thursday October 23 2014, @06:01PM
Walking alone at night? Really? If you live in a big city, you probably won't ever be alone out on the sidewalk. If you live in rural/suburban area then there's little if any danger; certainly not enough to warrant such fear. You're more likely to be killed on your morning commute in the light of day, yet no one ever seems to show or express any fear of driving on the freeways. Humans are really bad at statistics when we try to use our intuition.
I don't respond to ACs.
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Thursday October 23 2014, @06:15PM
I'm sure at least half the respondents were women, and the threat of rape while walking alone at night on a dark street is not an imaginary, ill-founded fear by women.
subicular junctures
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @06:27PM
It's also not an imaginary, ill-founded fear for those of us who have been mugged.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @06:33PM
I was completely unsurprised to see a guy with that particular .sig express that particular view.
He's a walking (or at least typing) cliche.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:04PM
I'm sure at least half the respondents were women, and the threat of rape while walking alone at night on a dark street is not an imaginary, ill-founded fear by women.
The fear is actually largely ill-founded, which doesn't diminish the fact that it is a widely held fear.
Rape statistics have been falling dramatically [wikipedia.org], falling 60% in the last 15 years according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics [bjs.gov], while at the same time the fear of rape has been rising. A woman is far more likely to be raped ins Sweden than in the US.
No small part of this reduction is due to the public discussion of rape, and extensive changes in laws.
That same public discussion forces changes in laws and in law enforcement, but has the side effect of raising fear levels.
Its not unusual for the fear of crime to rise at the same time as actual crime decreases. Women today are far safer than their mothers were.
Ok, mod me to hell, but it had to be said.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:35PM
> The fear is actually largely ill-founded,
It isn't just rape that women walking alone fear, it is assault in general. Being physically smaller they make easier targets.
But falling rates of rape don't mean the elimination of rape.
> A woman is far more likely to be raped in Sweden than in the US.
From your own citation a bit of caution against doing exactly what you just did: "widely differing legal systems, offence definitions, terminological variations, recording practices and statistical conventions makes any cross-national comparison on rape statistics difficult, which is why the UNODC itself caution against using their figures"
> Ok, mod me to hell, but it had to be said.
Ah, the whiner's defense. Poor little persecuted frojack. David to the goliath of teh eval moderators.
(Score: 2) by skullz on Thursday October 23 2014, @08:03PM
Wow, you had some interesting comments until that really personal attack there at the end.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @09:33PM
> Wow, you had some interesting comments until that really personal attack there at the end.
It wasn't out of nowhere it was a response to an attack on all of us.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday October 23 2014, @08:05PM
The fact that rape statistics are falling doesn't mean that it's not a real concern still. The fact that Swedes are more prone to rape than Americans doesn't mean that rape isn't an issue in America. Both of those numbers are relative to rape in a different time or place, if you want to make an arguement about how much modern American women should worry about rape you'd have to compare their average chance of getting raped to their average chance of falling victim to some other societal ill. You would also want to keep in mind the emotional damage done by rape. I don't know this for a fact, but I'd be willing to bet that PTSD from rape is more common/significant than PTSD from a car crash, or even a mugging. You could definitely make an arguement that women's fears of rape are unreasonably skewed towards stranger-danger situations (in reality most rapes are commited by someone that the victim knows), but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be worried about them. It just means they might want to worry about the other possibility more. If I were a woman, I wouldn't go walking at night without a piece metal in my pocket. At least not in my city. I know multiple women have done so and been raped. Let's not pretend that this isn't a real issue.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 23 2014, @08:28PM
I don't think anything I said implied its not a real issue. The fact that its in the press so much makes it clear that it is real.
I just think the fear is worse than the real risk.
That you know multiple women who have been raped should be offset by the number of women you know who have not been raped, but people only remember one side of the statistics, which is why they lash out at anyone pointing out that statistics are improving.
But as you said, the push these days seems to be to target date rape, and campus rape, and military rape.
Persons known to the victim. These are the type of rapes that go unreported most often. And they are far more common than the random walking down the street rapes. True, some cities are worse than others. Probably ALL cities are worse than small towns.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday October 23 2014, @11:23PM
Well you posted a comment composed mostly of bold font that was arguing that fear of stranger rape is largely ill-founded. Even if only ~5% of rapes are stranger rapes, I don't think that fear is ill-founded. If 25% of women are raped, that's still a 1.25% chance of being raped by a stranger in a woman's lifetime. Just to be clear, I'm pulling these figures out of my ass but they aren't too far off and more general sexual asssault figures would be even higher. Given the life-changing consequences that such an event can have, I don't think that qualifies as an unreasonable fear. It's not something that we should start sacrificing freedoms over, but it's certainly an incentive to get a CCW. I guess this comes down to what you consider a "reasonable" fear to be, but your mostly-bold comment arguing that fear of stranger rape is largely unfounded came off as neck-beardy in tone (at least to me).
Obviously, and even if 100% of the women I knew happened to be raped by strangers it would still be anecdotal evidence. I understand that. I also understand that women are way less likely to talk about their experiences of being raped when speaking to a male who seems to dismiss the issue, and I think that a lot of men have no conception of how many rape victims they know. That's why I threw that out there, but it wasn't really the crux of my comment.
And then there are the prison rapes, which are largely ignored. When they are talked about it's often in a joking manner that would be seen as totally politically incorrect if it were directed at female rape-victims. I saw a suit the ACLU was filing a while back on behalf of a man who had been repeatedly left in a cell with a known rapist over-night as a form of punishment. Not that I'm arguing we should be more politically correct about our humor, I just think it's a double standard.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday October 24 2014, @01:47AM
You're forgetting to consider that:
1) Sweden has a much broader societal definition of rape than the USA does, so women here wouldn't report something that women there would. That also means the Swedish women are also more likely to report rapes that American women tend to stay quiet about — chances are that Sweden doesn't have approximately 82% rapes go unreported like we do. Both situations skew things severely.
2) Even just 20 years ago, the vast majority of people in our society used to be unaware of how common rape is, which acts count, and who the victims typically are. That situation has only really changed since 2000, and has gained a lot of steam in the past 10 years, so obviously fear of being raped would rise: most of us didn't think it could happen to us back then. Considering rape is still disturbingly common, and that there's still a lot of men & women that believe it's a problem "bad girls" face, I'd say that if anything the levels of concern haven't reached the point of reality.
Personally, hell yes, I've learned to be "afraid" of walking around alone at night in my area. It's a nice quiet suburban neighborhood, but we do have occasional break-ins & attacks -- and most importantly, I know damn well that if some dude decides to mug or attack me, the physical disadvantage means I'd be in big trouble. An anesthesiologist said it perfectly once when I was going in for surgery as a kid: "there's very little chance that anything will happen, but it doesn't matter if it's 'only one in a million' if you're that one." :)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday October 24 2014, @05:58AM
1) Sweden has a much broader societal definition of rape than the USA does,
I didn't know that, and I have to take you at your word that you did know it and are not just stating it to dismiss the radical difference in the statistics. Is there something in each of the other countries of a similar nature?
2) Even just 20 years ago, the vast majority of people in our society used to be unaware of how common rape is, which acts count, and who the victims typically are. That situation has only really changed since 2000, and has gained a lot of steam in the past 10 years,
And yet, over that same period, rape statistics go steadily down.
Doesn't that seem odd? Once something becomes common knowledge, and the stigma is beaten down, you would expect the percentage of victims who were afraid or ashamed to report rape would decrease, and reports of would increase. There would be more reports. there are support groups, counseling, etc.
Yet the statistics go down. People being more willing to come forward, yet fewer doing so. Is there something else holding them back? Or are rapes actually down more than enough to erase the extra willingness to come forward.
I don't know. But crime of all types is down, while fear of crime is up. Its not just rape.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @06:31PM
People are social animals. Many people are afraid of being alone in any situation.
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Friday October 24 2014, @01:55AM
OK - I can appreciate this. I ridiculed this fear of walking alone at night in an earlier post, but then again -- I **love** being alone. I'm not anti-social, and I don't want to be alone all the time, but I can appreciate that I'm probably on the outlier spectrum of appreciating "lonely walks in the dark". (Also, in the current thread's context, a man with a decent amount of experience walking safely at night through strange cities.)
Thanks for the reminder.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 24 2014, @11:27AM
I don't mind walking alone at night. The problem is if I'm not actually alone... ;)
(Score: 1) by darthservo on Thursday October 23 2014, @06:27PM
"We have nothing to fear, but running out of beer!"
- FDR, 31st century.
"Good judgment seeks balance and progress. Lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration." - Dwight D Eisenhower
(Score: 4, Informative) by Wootery on Thursday October 23 2014, @06:37PM
Here [cdc.gov] the CDC list the top 10 causes of death for Americans.
There is absolutely no overlap with the top 5 most feared. Random shootings... these people clearly take the media too seriously. Only a tiny number of those murdered each year are victims in a mass murder.
Personally I try to keep in mind that statistically the most dangerous thing I do most days is cross the road.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:00PM
Absolutely true, but there is more to fear than just death. Getting mugged would be pretty bad (fortunately I don't know from experience) given the crook would take my phone and my wallet and I would be mightily inconvenienced by that. I mention that because mugging aligns with (but is not congruent to) the #1 fear, walking alone at night.
Even your fear, of crossing the road, is more likely to result in serious injury rather than death.
To me, 4 out of the top 5 fears are perfectly reasonable as they are things that could realistically happen to almost anyone. Mass shooting stands out as an exception in the otherwise realistic list of fears. Thank you, media distortion!
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:11PM
There are a lot of XKCD comics that are relevant. This one's my favorite: http://xkcd.com/795/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Thursday October 23 2014, @08:06PM
Velociraptors on hoverboards only make the Top 5 Fears list for a small minority of Americans (Randall Munroe and probably some of his readers).
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:32PM
huh, I didn't know Alzheimer's was fatal...
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Thursday October 23 2014, @08:08PM
Anything that does that much damage to the brain is apt to kill the patient eventually. And it seems like an unpleasant way to go, so scarier than heart disease.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 1) by PReDiToR on Saturday October 25 2014, @04:09AM
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @06:55PM
One thing Americans ought to fear is getting involved in the criminal justice system. It's imperfect at best, the government definitely has the advantage, and innocent people are sent to jail and prison regularly. Once there, getting a new trial, even proving one's innocence, is very difficult. And once you do your time, you're still stuck in it.
The criminal justice system is hell, pure and simple.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GlennC on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:15PM
From what I've seen of my fellow Americans, most of them fear two things:
1. Anyone who isn't like them, or what they consider "normal".
2. Anything that can't be explained in less than 30 seconds using words of 1 syllable or less.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:41PM
Surprised math isn't on the list.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 23 2014, @09:33PM
I have to say
1. The government
2. The government
3. The government
.
.
.
50. The government
51. My kids leaving their roller skates in the hallway at night
Washington DC delenda est.