Collection · 12 entries
Most Common Phobias
Every list of the commonest phobias is built the same way, by repeating the previous list. This one is built from what each entry's sources actually measured, and the first thing that shows is how rarely a number has a survey behind it. Arachnophobia is called one of the commonest anxiety disorders on record, and the range quoted for it, 3.5 to 6.1 per cent of the world's population, names no survey, no year and no sample size. Claustrophobia carries a diagnosed prevalence of 3.3 per cent from a named 2008 study. Emetophobia is put at roughly nine per cent by a literature that also calls itself thin. Three claims, three different qualities of evidence, and no popular list separates them.
The set runs from the fears with the strongest measurement behind them to the ones whose reputation for being common outruns anything that was counted. It leaves out the terms that appear everywhere because they sound impressive rather than because anybody measured them, and it keeps two entries that are common in a way the word usually hides: the dentist, where avoidance produces the disease that confirms the fear, and public speaking, which is recognised but as social anxiety disorder rather than as a phobia of its own. Common is not the same as recognised, and neither is the same as measured. Every entry here says which of the three it has.
Hand-set, never alphabetical
The set, in order
12 entries
- ClaustrophobiaThe strongest figure in the set: 3.3 per cent diagnosed, from a named 2008 study rather than a circulating range.
- Fear of VomitingRoughly nine per cent, from a literature that describes itself as thin, which is still more than most of this set can show.
- Fear of SpidersThe name everybody gives first, resting on a global range that carries no survey, no year and no sample size.
- Fear of HeightsCommon at the mild end and rare at the severe one, and the entry separates visual height intolerance from the phobia.
- Social Anxiety DisorderThe commonest fear whose object is other people, and the one where favourable evaluation counts as a trigger too.
- Fear of Public SpeakingRecognised, but as social anxiety disorder rather than as a phobia of its own, which is what the popular lists get wrong.
- Fear of the DentistThe fear that manufactures its own evidence: avoidance produces the emergency appointment that teaches the fear again.
- Fear of FlyingSituational type, and the fear where avoidance is easiest to arrange and most expensive to keep.
- Fear of SnakesThe other reflex answer, filed as animal type and named alongside spiders as one of the commonest of them.
- Fear of DogsThe animal fear least amenable to avoidance, because the trigger is kept as a pet in the tens of millions and walked in public.
- Fear of NeedlesCommon enough to have public health consequences, and the one entry here whose body does the opposite of the rest.
- Fear of the DarkNamed in the manuals, and the entry where childhood onset does most of the explaining.
Keep going
The other collections
- Words That Are Not PhobiasPhotophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, chromophobia. Where the suffix does scientific, political or sociological work instead of naming a fear.
- Medical and Dental FearsThe fears whose avoidance is itself the danger. Needles, dentists, doctors, hospitals and scans, and what avoiding each one costs the person avoiding it.
- One Word, Two Different FearsAerophobia, phonophobia, basophobia: terms carrying two unrelated senses, with the collision traced and the usable meaning named.
- Phobias in the DSM-5Animal, natural environment, blood-injection-injury, situational and other: one entry per DSM-5 type, plus the fears the manual filed somewhere else.