Does it mean fearing other people's opinions or your own?

Both, according to the reference work. The 2008 encyclopedia specifies that the fear may relate to hearing or learning the opinions of others or to fearing one's own. Every popular account keeps the first and drops the second, which is understandable from the etymology and leaves out the more unusual half.

How is it different from doxophobia?

Doxophobia is the fear of expressing an opinion and allodoxaphobia, on the usual reading, is the fear of hearing one. They come from the same root, describe opposite positions in the same conversation, and are regularly used for each other. Both end in the person saying nothing.

What does the avoidance look like?

Not answering questions, and not taking part. That is the specific consequence the sources describe, and it is the reason the fear is likely to be misread: in a classroom or an office, someone who has stopped participating looks disengaged rather than frightened.

Why is an opinion a difficult object to fear?

Because it cannot be avoided. Most specific phobias attach to something a person can arrange not to encounter. Opinions arrive unbidden, and survey research has found that people will invent one about a drug that does not exist rather than decline to hold one. A fear of something compulsory behaves like social anxiety rather than like a phobia.

Fear of Other People's Opinions (Allodoxaphobia): Meaning

Fear of Other People's Opinions

Allodoxaphobia

Allodoxaphobia is a fear of opinions, and the reference definition includes the person's own opinions as well as everybody else's. That second half is missing from every popular account of the word.

What the definition actually includes

The 2008 encyclopedia of phobias defines allodoxaphobia as fear of opinions, and specifies that this may relate to hearing or learning the opinions of others or to fearing one's own opinions. It adds that the fear may be related to a fear of criticism.

The websites that carry the term keep the first clause and discard the second. They define it as a fear of hearing what other people think, describe restrictions the person places on themselves, and stop. Fearing one's own opinions is a different condition: it is not about being judged but about holding a position at all, and it belongs closer to obsessive doubt than to social anxiety.

The Greek is the reason the popular reading looks right. Allo means different or other, doxa means opinion, so the word reads as fear of other people's opinions and the encyclopedia's wider definition has to be taken on the book's authority rather than on the etymology.

Which word names the opposite fear

Doxophobia is the fear of expressing an opinion. Allodoxaphobia is, on the popular reading, the fear of hearing one. The two are derived from the same root, they describe contrary positions in the same exchange, and they are routinely swapped. A person who will not speak and a person who will not listen produce the same silence and need different explanations.

What the record consists of

No case report, no survey, no diagnostic listing. The term is described on the sites that carry it as belonging to the rare and unusual social phobias, and the symptom lists they give are the general anxiety set:

sweating palms
a raised heart rate
shallow breathing
nausea The causes they offer are also the general ones for a social fear, with childhood criticism from a parent, teacher or carer named as the usual route.

The consequences described are worth keeping because they are specific. A person with the fear may stop answering questions and stop participating, which in a school or a workplace looks like disengagement rather than fear, and is likely to be treated as such.

Why opinions are an unusual object

A blog post by a psychologist in 2013 makes the observation the clinical sources do not. Opinions are, in most settings, compulsory. Survey research has repeatedly found that people will supply an opinion on a subject that does not exist, including fictitious drugs listed on a questionnaire, rather than decline to have one. George Bernard Shaw's line, that if a person leaves the smallest corner of their head vacant other people's opinions rush in from all quarters, is quoted in the same piece.

That is the environment this fear operates in. Most specific phobias attach to something a person can arrange not to meet. Opinions cannot be avoided, cannot be scheduled and arrive unbidden, which puts the fear structurally closer to social anxiety disorder than to a phobia of an object.

Common questions

Questions about Allodoxaphobia

Does it mean fearing other people's opinions or your own?: Both, according to the reference work. The 2008 encyclopedia specifies that the fear may relate to hearing or learning the opinions of others or to fearing one's own. Every popular account keeps the first and drops the second, which is understandable from the etymology and leaves out the more unusual half.
How is it different from doxophobia?: Doxophobia is the fear of expressing an opinion and allodoxaphobia, on the usual reading, is the fear of hearing one. They come from the same root, describe opposite positions in the same conversation, and are regularly used for each other. Both end in the person saying nothing.
What does the avoidance look like?: Not answering questions, and not taking part. That is the specific consequence the sources describe, and it is the reason the fear is likely to be misread: in a classroom or an office, someone who has stopped participating looks disengaged rather than frightened.
Why is an opinion a difficult object to fear?: Because it cannot be avoided. Most specific phobias attach to something a person can arrange not to encounter. Opinions arrive unbidden, and survey research has found that people will invent one about a drug that does not exist rather than decline to hold one. A fear of something compulsory behaves like social anxiety rather than like a phobia.

Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26