Iowa’s Biggest Fear is SO 2020

It's the spooky, scary, chilly time of year. With Halloween less than two weeks away, I decided to dig into the spooky-side of Iowa as a way to celebrate the holiday. What I found surprised me - Iowans have an interesting top fear. Before I tell you what it is, I'll let you know I found this info on Psych News Daily. They used Google search metrics to breakdown what fear all 50 states search the most. The top answer for Iowa...

Anthropophobia

Okay so, chances are anthropophobia means little to nothing to you as a word. I didn't know what it was. Oh, and before you yell 'spiders!' at the top of your lunges, I'll save you the energy, it's not a fear of spiders. That's arachnophobia. Anthropophobia is actually a fear of people. Pretty simple in principle, but a deeper dive on Psych News Daily find that searches for this fear were up five fold from 2019, and really spiked in April. Why? Well, you know why... COVID-19 of course. The pandemic really boomed in April and has been a mainstay on the nightly news ever since.

So what are some of the other top fears? Well, the fear of being alone was a common one, with two of Iowa's border state, Minnesota and Missouri, searching most for that one. Intimacy was Illinois top fear and it was spiders for Wisconsin. Nebraska went with public speaking. I miss the days when clowns were everyone's top fear.

You can see all 50 states results here.

So what's your top fear? Personally, I'd go with waking up at 4 a.m. I do it 5 days a week, and I am still deathly afraid of it...