Expert: John Shea - 5/31/2007

Question
I've read that the fear of public speaking stems from violating evolutionary response to the primal instinct of "safety in numbers," and that is it a type of fight-or-flight fear.  Is this true?  Is there another reason from neanderthal times which would contribute to our modern day fear of public speaking?

Answer
Dear Julie
That does not sound like a credible explanation.  First off, primate group sizes vary tremendously, from solitary individuals to large troops, so there is not really and primal instinct towards living in groups (safety in numbers).
I am not a psychologist (you should consider addressing your question to such a person), but fear of public speaking strikes me as a learned behavior. It probably is more properly thought about as "fear of speaking in front of strangers".  In prehistoric times, most public speaking involved speaking in front of people who knew each other for a very long time.  Thus, their reactions to what was being said would have been relatively predictable.  With larger populations, villages, cities, etc., public speaking would have involved speaking in front of audiences with more strangers, and thus more risk of a negative reaction.  I don't think this is an issue of an instinct, otherwise it would be difficult to modify it (to lose fear of public speaking), but clearly it is possible to do this.  To give you a modern example, most teachers are a little nervous in front of a class when they start a semester, but as they get more familiar with the class, they feel more at ease.

There may be an evolutionary explanation for fear of public speaking, but in my opinion it is probably something very recent in origin, probably since the origins of agriculture and settled village life, (<10,000 years), but whatever psychological basis there is for it appears deveopmentally "plastic" (easily enough modified in the absence of physiological pathology).

Cheers,
John Shea