Trypophobia Revealed as Germans’ Biggest Phobia

  • Ever wondered if someone else shares your paralysing fear of spiders, heights, or snakes?

Intrigued to find out which are the most common phobias throughout Europe and the USA, experts at PsychicWorld.comExternal Link collated a seed list of the 15 most popular phobias and analysed the monthly average Google search volumes for each one across all countries included in the study.

Key Findings 

  • The most common phobia among people in Germany, with an average monthly search volume of 22,600, is trypophobia, which is a fear of holes.

  • First place for the most popular phobia across all of Europe and the USA is shared by claustrophobia (fear of confined spaces) and trypophobia (fear of holes).

  • Hemophobia (fear of blood) is the least common phobia, appearing in the search volumes of only 12 out of the 41 analysed countries in the study.

Here are the most common phobias throughout Europe and the USA ranked …

Ranking

Phobia

Total Number of Average Monthly Search Volumes

Phobia Meanings

Number of Countries Searching the Phobia

1

Claustrophobia

56,460

fear of confined spaces

41

1

Trypophobia

812,150

fear of holes

41

2

Acrophobia

56,990

fear of heights

40

2

Agoraphobia

570,400

fear of open spaces

40

3

Arachnophobia

88,480

fear of spiders

38

3

Thanatophobia

35,180

fear of death

38

4

Trypanophobia

37,220

fear of needles

34

4

Monophobia

24,770

fear of being alone

34

5

Cynophobia

20,390

fear of dogs

33

6

Aerophobia

14,230

fear of flying

30

6

Mysophobia

28,830

fear of germs

30

7

Astraphobia

14,460

fear of thunderstorms

29

8

Social Phobia

14,820

fear of social situations

27

9

Ophidiophobia

24,510

fear of snakes

24

10

Hemophobia

19,920

fear of blood

12

The first place for the most common phobia goes to both claustrophobia (fear of confined spaces) and trypophobia (fear of holes), appearing in the average search volumes of all 41 researched countries. However, the latter has the highest overall search volume of all phobias—812,150. Trypohobia is also the number one phobia, based on search volumes, in 39 of the countries analysed.

Second place is also shared by two phobias—acrophobia (fear of heights) and agoraphobia (fear of open spaces). Both fears were searched for in 40 of the countries. Agoraphobia comes in second place for total number of search volumes (570,400) as well and is the number one fear in three countries (Belarus, Czech Republic and Malta).

Being in the average search volumes of 38 countries, arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and thanatophobia (fear of death) share the third place. Fear of spiders also places third when it comes to overall number of search volumes, having 88,480. While fear of death holds a total of 35,180.

Ranking in fourth place are trypanophobia (fear of needles) and monophobia (fear of being alone). Both were present in 34 countries. And fifth ranks cynophobia (fear of dogs)—part of the search volumes of 33 countries.

And the least common phobia is …

Appearing in the search volumes of only 12 countries in total (29 less than trypophobia in first place), hemophobia (fear of blood) ranks last in the research.

Methodology

  1. PsychicWorld.comExternal Link sought to discover the most common phobias people throughout Europe and the USA have.

  2. ​A comprehensive seed list of popular phobias was compiled utilising multiple websites, including: Verywell MindExternal Link, MedicineNetExternal Link, Money IncExternal Link, The International Psychology ClinicExternal Link and KnowinsidersExternal Link. Only phobias that appeared more than once across the different articles were taken into consideration.

  3. ​A refined list of 15 phobias was created.

  4. Following, a complete list of all 44 countries in Europe was extracted from WorldometerExternal Link. The following countries were omitted from the research, due to lack of data: Holy See, Liechtenstein, Monaco and San Marino. Out of 44 European countries in total, data was collected and amalgamated for 40.

  5. Average monthly search volumes for each phobia across all countries were then gathered utilising the search analytics tool AhrefsExternal Link. Search volumes for keyword variations, such as: fear of heights, fear of spiders and fear of flying were also collected in order to obtain accurate results.

  6. All phobias were then ranked based on the number of countries they had appeared in, so that the most common phobia could be determined.

  7. All data was collected between 23-24 February 2022 and is subject to change. 

 Credit: www.psychicworld.comExternal LinkExternal Link