Phobia of friday 13 and their effects....

Friday the 13th phobia


A phobia is an extremely intense and irrational fear of a person, place, or thing that has no basis in reality and the fear of Friday the 13th is no exception. It is estimated that 25 million American suffer from this fear and will change their habits and practices on Friday the 13th to avoid the harm they believe comes along with this infamous day.

What is the cost of this phobia?

According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in North Carolina, this phobia costs Americans 800 million dollars each day from lost of work and other behaviors associated with the fear of Friday the 13th. Americans will stop going to the mall, take airplane trips, go to work or church or grocery shopping on Friday 13th. They may even be afraid of driving their cars and taking public transportation.

In contrast according to Finnish researchers for The Center for Insurance Statistics, Friday the 13th is safer than any other Friday in the year because there is less traffic on the streets. They claim that there are less fires and thefts on days, which have some kind of superstition attached to them.

Will something bad happen because we believe something bad will happen On Friday the 13th?

Researchers have done several studies to see if the psychological fear that something bad will happen will lead to an actual rising to something bad happening.

In 2002 a Finnish research team found that 63 percent of women actually died on Friday the 13th as compared to any other Friday. They concluded that the fear that something bad will happen causes worry and anxiety leading to dire consequences and thus something bad happens.

The British Medical Journal also published a research article on hospitalizations occurring from traffic accidents on Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th and found that the hospitalizations were up by 53 percent on 13th. They recommended that people having this fear stay home on Friday the 13th.

On the other hand, Professor David Philips of the University of California did not find any significance in deaths occurring on Friday the 13th, but he did find a significant difference in deaths occurring the 4th of the month within the Japanese and Chinese population. These two groups find the number 4 unlucky. He found 27 percent more deaths from cardiac arrest among Asians on the 4th of the month in California where there is a high Asian population. There were 13 percent more deaths across the United States. The word 4 sounds like the word death in the Cantonese dialect.

Of course other researchers disagree. It has longed been known that people tend to find what they are looking for. It becomes a form of tunnel vision. When a person is looking for something bad to happen because it is Friday the 13th they will find it. Some of the very things they find bad are things that can happen on any other day of the year, or things they would not normally consider bad at all.

For example, I have very poor special awareness; I don’t have a sense of where I am when I am in a strange place. I don’t really know north from south, east, or west when put in the middle of nowhere. If I am familiar with the area than I have a handle of where I am, but if I don’t I am lost. I took the bus to school for the very first time on my own on a Friday the 13th and I took the bus going into the wrong direction. Was it because it was Friday the 13th that it happened? Of course not! I could have done the very same thing on any other day of the year.

If we stub our toe on Friday the 13th, could it not have been something we would have done on any other day? Of course it could have, and most likely we would yelp or mumble a few choice words, but we would not have said ah ha its Thursday the 28th that is why I stubbed my toe.

The fear of Friday the 13th is steeped in superstition from an earlier time period. There is no real basis to prove that anything bad will happen on the day that would not have happened on any other day. It is just pure coincidence, or it is something you are looking for to happen and because you are looking, you are sure to find.