As spooky season nears its climax, Americans are as scared as ever, and a new survey says they’re generally afraid of even more things.
These findings are included in the latest edition of the American Fear Survey, published every Halloween by California’s Chapman University.
Corrupt government officials, US involvement in World War III, and terrorism (cyber or otherwise) are all among the top 10 fears in a poll released in the final stages of the November 5 presidential election. However, the influence of Russia and Israel continues. They are at war with Ukraine and Hamas, respectively.
More than half of Americans fear these specific global concerns. These concerns are more personal hardships, such as the death or illness of a loved one or having enough money for the future, which also made it into the top 10 of the survey.
However, many of the 85 fears asked of the survey’s 1,008 respondents (including spiders, ghosts, and public speaking) were highly prevalent. For example, nearly half of Americans (approximately 48%) are concerned about the climate crisis, which is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels and has intensified destructive hurricanes like Helen and Milton, which recently devastated areas of the southeastern United States. I’m afraid of
According to the study authors, this was not always the case. According to a statement from Ed Day, an associate professor of sociology at Chapman University who contributed to the study, when the study began in 2019, more than 50% of Americans believed that their biggest fear was a corrupt government. It is said that it was shared by Currently, all of the top 10 fears in the survey are shared by more than half of respondents.
Chapman sociology professor and department chair Christopher Bader said in a separate statement that “this tells us that Americans, in general, are becoming more fearful of everything.” .
Bader believes that the way people get information about the world around them contributes to their fear of governments, of nuclear or biological warfare, or of deadly diseases that may strike them or their loved ones. He said it was almost certain that there were.
“Social media and websites target people by showing them what they fear,” he said in a statement. “We think that people are being instilled with fear through algorithms, which increases their overall fear level.”
The study contains bad news for people who are afraid of planes, needles, and blood. Less than 15% of Americans share similar phobias, according to a study by Chapman researchers released a little more than a week before Halloween arrives on Thursday.
Meanwhile, despite warnings that Islamophobia would soar during Israel’s war in Gaza, only 8.7% of respondents to the Chapman survey said they were afraid of Muslims, and 85% of those asked was the lowest of the concerns.
Few survey respondents reported being afraid of immigrants (12.2%) or that white Americans are no longer the racial majority in the United States (16.2%). This is despite racist rhetoric surrounding both topics permeating mainstream right-wing politics.
Chapman said market research firm SSRS conducted the nationally representative survey using probability-based methods. Chapman officials said the survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, adding that they are conducting the survey to understand what Americans of all faiths are afraid of and the consequences. .
The study’s researchers also emphasized that people’s fears often do not match reality. For example, many Americans report being murdered or raped by a stranger, at 33.3% and 29.5%, respectively. But violence in the United States has been on the decline in recent years, according to the Pew Research Center.
Such misconceptions can have real-world consequences, such as persuading authorities to prioritize neutralizing serial killers over the far more prevalent domestic abusers. “By focusing on unknown dangers, we end up spending resources in the wrong direction,” Bader said in a statement.
