People's Greatest Fears Were Ranked & You're Not Alone With These Major Phobias
There's a phobia for just about everything 😱
A woman holding her face while looking out a window.
If you have a phobia that involves spiders, chickens or going outside, you'd be surprised with how many people you actually share that!
A recent study by All About Cats reveals some of the most common irrational fears that people deal with every day, based on Google search traffic involving those fears in each country.
The list includes several phobias you might expect (we're looking at you, arachnophobia) and some that you've maybe never even heard of – although that doesn't mean you can't experience them.
If you're dealing with a phobia, you'll definitely know. A phobia is an extreme and irrational fear of something, according to Harvard Medical School. When triggered, it can cause you to sweat, heat up, feel sick, experience a rapid heartbeat and even go into a full panic attack.
If you're afraid of being alone with your fear, don't worry: you're not.
According to the study, the leading phobia worldwide is agoraphobia, with 61% of countries having "fear of public spaces and crowds" as their most-searched fear. We're guessing all the COVID lockdowns of the last two years haven't helped with this one.
The second-most common fear is xenophobia or fear of strangers/foreigners, at 19.17%. Third on the list was claustrophobia, which involves "mild to severe anxiety when in closed spaces."
Animal phobias naturally made the list with arachnophobia (a fear of spiders) leading as the most popular animal phobia. Then came zoophobia (a fear of animals), cynophobia (fear of dogs) and alektorophobia (fear of chickens).
Other common phobias on the list include ombrophobia (fear of rain), which was more of a big deal in Argentina and Germany; megalophobia (a fear of big things); and hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. That last one is a fear of long words, and whoever came up with that name was clearly a cruel person.
Greece and Belarus had higher levels of noctiphobia (fear of the dark), while other highly-searched phobias included gamophobia (a fear of commitment), ablutophobia (a fear of bathing) and nomophobia ( fear of being without your cellphone).
If you'd like to browse the rest of the fears, I'm afraid you'll have to check out the data for yourself.