#10 Being in a crowd(01 of10)
Open Image ModalCelebrities can't live without 'em but for many people the experience of being swarmed by a crowd is terrifying. Sometimes a crowd phobia is really a form of agoraphobia--the fear that you'll panic, lose control and not be able to escape--or social phobia--the fear of being embarrassed in front of other people. But those are even more common as we'll see. (credit:Wikimedia)
#9 Storms, thunder and lightning(02 of10)
Open Image ModalDog owners won't be surprised to learn that storm phobias are part of our animal nature. At my house, when thunder strikes, our dog starts pacing like a nervous bridegroom. Madonna is said to suffer from a phobic fear of storms, but if that's true, she's hardly alone. About nine percent of the U.S. population reports significant storm fears and more than two percent have a diagnosable phobia. People with the phobia have been known to spend hours trolling weather forecasting sites during summer months. Throughout human history, storms have been one of Mother Nature's most deadly threats--from hurricanes and tornados to typhoons, and monsoons. It's no wonder that our brains are primed to be afraid of the perfect storm. (credit:Wikimedia)
#8 Water/drowning(03 of10)
Open Image ModalFor many people, the scariest part about going to the beach is the thought of putting on a bathing suit. But for the one in 40 Americans with a bona fide phobia of water (aquaphobia), that's the least of their worries. People with severe water phobias may even have trouble bathing. The problem is usually related to a fear of drowning, another ancient threat that we've probably been wired to dread, although it's often triggered by some frightening experience with water. There's one special kind of water phobia where the cause is clear: rabies. In fact, rabies is sometimes called "hydrophobia", another name for fear of water. Why? Rabies victims can develop paralysis of their swallowing muscles, leading to painful spasms and panic when they try to drink water. (credit:Wikimedia)
#7 Blood-injury-injections (04 of10)
Open Image ModalHollywood has built an industry on pushing our fear buttons when it comes to blood and guts. But for some people, these fears are not exactly entertainment. Phobias of blood, injury, or injections, affecting about four to five percent of the population, are biologically unique among phobic fears. For most phobias, encountering the object of your terror is likely to fire up your fight or flight system--setting your heart racing and raising your blood pressure. But people with blood, injury, or injections fears often have a paradoxical sudden drop in heart rate and blood pressure that can lead to swooning. These are people who "faint at the sight of blood" or pass out when they get a shot or have their blood drawn--the technical term is "vasovagal syncope". One theory is that fainting at the sight of blood was an adaptation that might have been life-saving during bloody battles in our evolutionary past. If you were watching your tribe get mutilated by marauding attackers, fainting might let you "play dead" and live to see another day. (credit:Wikimedia)
#6 Flying(05 of10)
Open Image ModalFlying is "the safest form of travel"--but let's face it, the idea that you're going to sail through the air in a 70-ton hunk of metal can seem like a disaster waiting to happen (and that's even before you taste the food). I said that the most common irrational fears and phobias are connected to our evolutionary past--but here's one that seems to violate that rule. After all, people couldn't fly before the 20th century (if you don't count Icarus, and we know how that turned out). But flying neatly combines a whole bunch of primal threats -heights, strangers, enclosed spaces--that humans faced long before the Wright brothers ever took off. Today, more than 10% of us get seriously spooked about taking off in our big metal birds and more than three percent have a true phobia. (credit:Wikimedia)
#5 Claustrophobia(06 of10)
Open Image ModalTight spaces can be really scary, as anyone who's looked for an apartment in Manhattan can attest. But for our evolutionary ancestors, the stakes were even higher than having to sleep on a Murphy bed. Getting trapped by a predator or being buried alive in a cave could spell real trouble for your reproductive fitness. So we may be biologically prepared to pick up these fears, especially if we encounter a scary experience with being trapped. People with claustrophobia can be gripped with terror at the thought of riding an elevator, driving through tunnels, or having an MRI. (credit:Wikimedia)
#4 Agoraphobia(07 of10)
Open Image ModalLiterally "fear of the marketplace", the term agoraphobia was coined by a German neurologist named Carl Westphal in 1871. Today, its estimated that about five percent of he population has diagnosable agoraphobia. It typically involves a fear of public places, open spaces, or traveling. Many people with panic disorder develop agoraphobia because they're afraid a panic attack will strike when they're away from home. When its severe, people can become housebound--literally trapped by fear. (credit:Wikimedia)
#3 Heights(08 of10)
Open Image ModalA fear of heights is one of the earliest and most natural fears that we have. Infants are reluctant to crawl to their mothers if they have to cross over a plexiglass floor that looks like its several feet above ground (the so-called "visual cliff"). And more than 20% of adults report having had an irrational fear of heights. When the fear reaches the level of a phobia ("acrophobia") it can trigger attacks of panic and vertigo in high places like ladders, terraces or the window seat of a plane. (credit:Wikimedia)
#2 Animals (09 of10)
Open Image ModalIn 1974, Jim Stafford hit number three on the Billboard charts by crooning "I don't like spiders and snakes". But irrational fears of these and other critters rank number two on the all-time phobia charts. Animal fears and phobias are a normal part of childhood and usually kick in between two and four years of age, but for some people, they don't go away or develop later after a scary experience. (credit:Wikimedia)
#1 People(10 of10)
Open Image ModalAs Jean Paul Sartre once said, "L'enfer c'est les autres." He had something more existential in mind, but for a lot of us, interacting with other people can be a kind of hell. It's the king of all phobias, leading Jerry Seinfeld, another great philosopher, to observe, "According to most studies, people's number-one fear is public speaking. 'Death' is number two! Now, this means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy." One quarter of the population reports excessive fears of at least one social situation and public speaking fears top the list. More than 12% of the Americans meet criteria for full-blown social phobia, a condition in which social and performance fears cause significant suffering and impairment. In our evolutionary past, being stared at by strangers might have signaled a threatening encounter; blushing and trembling in front of other people may have developed as "appeasement displays" that communicate submissiveness in an attempt to avoid being attacked by strangers. (credit:Wikimedia)