Top 10 US fears include corrupt government, terrorism, world war

With the spooky season nearing its climax, Americans are as scared as ever – and they are generally afraid of more things, too, according to a new survey.

Those findings are contained in the latest edition of the Survey of American Fears that California’s Chapman University has been publishing annually around Halloween.

Corrupt government officials, the US becoming involved in a third world war, and terrorism (cyber or otherwise) are all among the top 10 fears flagged by the study released in the waning stages of the 5 November presidential election – and as Russia and Israel continue warring with Ukraine and Hamas, respectively.

More than half of the US is afraid of those particular global-level concerns – as they are more personal hardships such as seeing loved ones die or become ill and having enough money for the future, which are also in the study’s top 10.

But many of the 85 fears that the survey’s 1,008 respondents were asked about – including spiders, ghosts and public speaking – had high percentage shares. For instance, nearly half of Americans – about 48% – fear the climate crisis that is primarily being driven by the burning of fossil fuels and has supercharged destructive hurricanes like Helene and Milton, which recently devastated swaths of the south-east US.

It wasn’t always that way, according to the study’s authors. Only Americans’ top fear – a corrupt government – was shared by more than 50% of the public in the US when the survey debuted in 2019, said a statement from Ed Day, an associate professor of sociology at Chapman who contributed to the research. Now all of the survey’s top 10 fears are shared by more than half of respondents.

“This tells me Americans are becoming more afraid in general, about everything,” said a separate statement from Chapman sociology professor and department chairperson Christopher Bader.

Bader said the way people get their information about the world around them is almost certainly playing a role in making them more fearful, whether of the government, nuclear or biological warfare, or deadly illnesses coming for them or those they love.

“Social media and websites target people by showing them things that they are afraid of,” his statement said. “Through algorithms, people are being fed their fears, and we believe that’s increasing people’s overall level of fear.”

The survey contains bad news for people afraid of flying, needles or blood. Fewer than 15% of the public shares those same phobias, according to the Chapman researchers’ findings, which were released a little more than a week in advance of Halloween’s arrival on Thursday.

Meanwhile, despite warnings of a spike in Islamophobia amid Israel’s war in Gaza, only 8.7% of the Chapman survey’s respondents reported being fearful of Muslims – making that the lowest of the 85 concerns asked about.

Hardly any of the survey’s respondents reported being afraid of immigrants (12.2%) or of American whites no longer being the US’s racial majority (16.2%) despite the racist rhetoric surrounding both topics that has seeped its way into mainstream rightwing politics.

Chapman said the market research company SSRS conducted its nationally representative survey, which utilized a probability-based method. The survey’s margin of error is +/-4%, said Chapman officials, who added that they conduct the research to understand what makes Americans of all creeds afraid – and the consequences that stem from that.

The survey’s researchers also made it a point to say that people’s fears often do not align with reality. For instance, large numbers of Americans report being murdered or raped by strangers – 33.3% and 29.5%, respectively. But, according to the Pew Research Center, violence in the US has been declining in recent years.

Such misperceptions can translate into real-world effects, such as by convincing officials to prioritize neutralizing serial killers rather than domestic abusers, who are much more common. “We are so focused on stranger danger that it leads us to spend resources in the wrong way,” Bader said in a statement.