Culture and Society
PUBLISHED
Nothing captures the spirit of the times more acutely than what a society fears. This year, corrupt politicians, corporate power, technology, and terrorism apparently top the bill for Americans.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.To gain a better understanding of what gets Americans' anxieties ticking, Chapman University in California has conducted a study on fear.
Researchers asked 1,541 people to rate their levels of fear on 88 scenarios or phenomena on a scale of 1 (not scared) to 4 (very scared). Some of these scenarios included murder, romantic rejection, global warming, race, robots, or clowns. These were divided into wider categories called “domains of fear,” such as government, personal anxieties, man-made disasters, and natural disasters.
The four least feared things were all in the domain of “judgement of others” and included appearance, gender and race. Some of the other high scorers that didn’t make it into the infographic yet still terrify over 30 percent of Americans included Obamacare, reptiles, war, and tornados. You can check out the results in full here.
Image credit: Chapman University
Image credit: Chapman University
Main image credit: Thomas Hawk/Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0)
1
