Published: July 18, 2008 12:53 am            

Some scary thoughts ...

Editor’s note: This column first was published Aug. 1, 2004.



What scares you?

Do bumps in the night send chills down your spine? How about thunder and lightning? Do spiders send you shrieking from the room?

Everybody’s afraid of something, but when that fear becomes crippling it advances into the realm of a phobia.

There are nearly as many phobias as there are people in the world.

Some sound ridiculous and have funny-sounding names, but a phobia is decidedly not funny, particularly to its sufferers.

R. Reid Wilson, PhD, a spokesman for American Psychological Association, said phobias are much more intense than mere fear.

“To be defined as a phobia, the fear must cause some level of impairment,” he said.

We’re all familiar with some phobias, like acrophobia, the fear of heights, or arachnophobia, the fear of spiders. But have you ever heard of euphobia? That’s the fear of hearing good news. What about alektorophobia? You have that if you are afraid of chickens. And then there’s xyrophobia, the fear of razors.

Many people fear hell, the fiery underworld ruled by Satan, the eternal home of damned, tortured souls.

And that, say economists, is a good thing.

Researchers at Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis have found nations where most people believe in hell are less corrupt and more prosperous than those where hell holds no sway.

In the United States, 71 percent of the population expresses a belief in hell, according to the study, and this country boasts the world’s highest per capita income, according to the 2003 United Nations Human Development Report and 1990-1993 World Values Survey.

The fear of ever-lasting punishment for doing bad things, the economists reason, makes people more productive.

“A belief in hell tends to mean less corruption and less corruption tends to mean a higher per capita income,” according to the report.

Of course, the theory doesn’t completely hold up. A fear of hell hasn’t stemmed corruption in this country, despite its status as the world’s most productive. Have we already forgotten Enron, Tyco and WorldCom, not to mention ImClone, the scandal that ensnared Martha Stewart?

The citizens of Turkey have a wide belief in hell, with 85 percent of the population professing fear of the eternal fires. But Turkey’s per capita income is nearly six times less than that of the U.S.

Ireland is second only to the U.S. in per capita income but fourth in terms of a belief in hell, with 53 percent of its population saying they fear eternal damnation.

Nigeria is sixth with 51 percent of its residents believing in hell, but 131st out of 133 in terms of per capita income.

I don’t profess to know much about economics, but I doubt hell has much to do with a country’s productivity. Pornography is a billion-dollar industry in this country, contributing mightily to the per capita income.

Not that a little healthy fear of punishment is a bad thing. The fear of hearing my mother say the words, “Wait until your father gets home” was all it took to straighten me out.

Besides, the promise of heaven seems an infinitely stronger motivation than the fear of hell.

The fear of hell, by the way, is known as stygiophobia, which is a rather fearsome word in itself.

I actually have a little touch of a phobia, dendrophobia. That’s the fear of trees. Of course, that fear only strikes me on the golf course.

My biggest fear is that verbophobia will become widespread. That’s the fear of words.

If that happened, I’d have to get a real job. That’s a scary thought.



Mullin is senior writer of the News & Eagle.