Britain

What scares the British? It depends on how you ask the question. If it is about threats to the world or to the nation, the answer is quite consistently terrorism and religious extremism. Closer to home, it is knife crime and burglary. If you want to dig a bit deeper, the most common personal fears are heights, snakes and public speaking.

International terrorism is seen in the UK as the biggest threat facing the world by far. It topped a YouGov poll of the public’s global concerns last September, with 77% of those questioned naming it as the most serious issue, significantly ahead of armed conflicts (60%), pandemics (52%), climate change (39%) and nuclear proliferation (31%).

That was more than a year after the last lethal terrorism incident on British soil, the murder of off-duty soldier Lee Rigby in London. But the poll was conducted just a few days after Islamic State extremists had carried out their first filmed beheading of a British hostage.

The high awareness of the terrorist threat, and high sensitivity to it, seem to be consistent over time and polls. An in-depth analysis of public threat perceptions soon to be published in the British Journal of Political Science based on surveys in 2012 found that about 80% of respondents ranked terrorism as a global threat. It was also seen as a national threat by close to 70%.

However, when the authors – Daniel Stevens of Exeter University and Nick Vaughan-Williams of Warwick University – looked at fears at a community and individual level, the key threats were knife crime, online fraud and burglary. Terrorism did not figure in the top five concerns. People saw it as a problem for the wider world without seeing it as having much impact on daily life.

“In surveys and focus groups, people from all over the country invariably had a perception of the security threat that had nothing to do with the national threat,” Stevens said. “On terrorism, people say: if it happens, it happens. And we didn’t find that varied much by region.”

Below the immediate rational fears lurk the national phobias, which are entirely different again. Top of the blind terror league here, according to a YouGov poll last March, are heights (23% were “very afraid”), snakes (21%) and public speaking (20%), followed by spiders (18%). None of them are a significant threat, statistically speaking, but then again, neither is terrorism.

Julian Borger (The Guardian)

Germany

The German psyche, some would say, is bust. It is, somehow, collectively disturbed. Germans either lean towards outrageous hubris – see Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler, the current attempts to save the euro – or else they withdraw into their shells and wallow in depression. Either on top of the world, or in the depths of despair – either way, beyond any sense of moderation.

There’s a good reason why the term “German angst” has entered the worldwide vocabulary. It means the Germans’ supposed tendency to be tentative and anxious, or to react chiefly out of fear. As examples, people cite Germany’s foreign policy reserve, or, more concretely, its aversion to military intervention, or else its hasty phasing out of nuclear power in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident. Then there’s their outrage over all those data-guzzling monsters – Google, Facebook, the NSA. Even former chancellor Helmut Schmidt once said it: “The Germans tend to be scared. It’s been stuck in their consciousness since the end of the Nazi times and the war.”

So are Germans really a nation of worriers? Perhaps a little. On the other hand, all these examples can be explained rationally: the defensive foreign policy has a lot to do with the legacy of the conquest-mad Nazis – it’s a reaction to a lesson learned from history. The withdrawal from nuclear power, on the other hand, is an attempt to lead the way on what they see as an inevitable development.

Are surveys any help? According to the “fear index” of the global IT firm Unisys, which measures among other things feelings of personal security, Germany, with 146 out of a possible 300 points, was roughly in the middle of the 13 countries surveyed. The French are more scared (174), Britons less (103), the Dutch feel the most secure (66). That could be down to the Dutch spending twice as much on insurance every year ($6,012) as the Germans ($2,977). Though the Germans like to insure themselves mainly against direct material threats (life insurance, accidents, liability, theft); old age poverty and illness seem to worry them less.

That fits the results of more specialised fear surveys. According to the German insurance firm R+V, Germans are most concerned about money: their biggest worry, at 58%, is the rising cost of living. After that, at 51%, comes the fear of becoming disabled in old age and being a burden to others, as well as the fear of natural disasters. Two-thirds of those polled fear that Germany will have to spend more money on the euro crisis. All in all, Germany’s fear index, the average aggregate of all its personal, economic, and political fears, sank in 2014 to its lowest level in 20 years. Heidelberg political scientist Manfred Schmidt says the Germans are not a nation of scaredy-cats. “They react with justified concern,” he said, “to current events and problems.”

Thomas Kirchner (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

France

The sense of fear has never before been so high in France: 93% of people consider that the threat is “mostly high” or “very high” , according to an Ifop poll carried out for the Atlantico website a few days after last month’s Paris terror attacks. “We’ve never seen that in the past,” said Jérôme Fourquet, director of the business strategies and opinion department at Ifop.

Even before the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Parisian kosher supermarket in which 20 people – including three gunmen – died, the rise of radical Islamism was at the top of fears for 2015 for the French.

In an Ifop poll for Paris Match in December, such fears were greater than concern over climate change, the financial crisis in Europe, conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Ebola, the rise of the far right in Europe, France’s foreign military intervention and aircraft accidents. January’s attacks have only highlighted this trend.

“When you think of outside threats, the choice of subjects is necessarily limited,” said Brice Teinturier, director of Ipsos. “And when you are faced with events as violent as the [Paris] attacks, then obviously it’s going to change your perception.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest French special forces leave after the assault on the besieged flat of Mohamed Merah in March 2012. Photograph: Pascal Pavani/AFP/Getty Images

For Fourquet, this fear has been building up since Mohamed Merah’s attacks in Toulouse and Montauban in March 2012, which left seven people dead. However, only just over a half of French people believed that the terrorist threat at that point was raised. “It was seen more in terms of a terrible news event rather than a terrorist attack,” Fourquet said.

After that, a new phenomenon emerged: French jihadis leaving for Iraq or Syria. And then the Charlie Hebdo attack happened. From a figure of around 80% at the beginning of January, the perception of the terrorist threat rose 13 percentage points in a few days. This does not necessarily translate into a feeling of dread. Only 24% of French people said they felt afraid after the events, according to an Ipsos poll for Le Monde and Europe 1 published last week. The predominant feelings are anger (72%) and disgust (51%).

Nor was there any unusual change in the use of anti-anxiety drugs. Only 1% of people said they had taken more tranquillisers than usual. The event, therefore, does not seem to have sparked a general psychosis.

Thibault Petit (Le Monde)

Poland

The Poles are frightened of Russia: 78% of the population, found a survey last year, regard the situation in Ukraine as a threat to the security of their country. This fear is hardly new: a large part of Polish political thought over the past 200 years has been preoccupied with protection against the Russian threat.

A more recent source of unease and frustration, however, is the western attitude towards Russia and the Ukrainian conflict.

Many Polish politicians, with President Bronisław Komorowski at their head, are educated historians. They remember well how in the 19th and 20th centuries the west repeatedly sold Poland to the Russians in a similar way – firstly in the name of retaining good relations with the Romanov dynasty and then with the Soviet empire.

In private, politicians are asking each other: “Are we not sufficiently integrated into the west to be worth not being sold off to the Russians?” There is a sense of disbelief at the way western politicians appear to treat Vladimir Putin as a rational player with whom communication is possible. And a desire, if the surveys are to be believed, for the defence of Ukraine to be resolved diplomatically by the great world powers: the European Union and the United States. Two-thirds of Poles, according to a CBOS survey last year, do not want to see direct involvement of Polish troops in the conflict.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The portrait of a Polish officer killed in 1940 by the NKVD, the USSR’s secret police. More than 22,000 Polish officers were killed in the Katyn forest and other sites in 1940 after being captured by the Soviet army. Photograph: Jacek Turczyk/AFP/Getty Images

Poland’s fear of Russia is often misconstrued in the west as Russophobia – but it has deep historical roots. From the great northern war (1700-1721), won by Peter the Great, until the fall of the Soviet Union, Russians were stationed on Polish territory with only very short intervals in between.

The annually celebrated public holiday of the Polish forces falls on 15 August, the anniversary of the great battle with communist Russia in Warsaw in 1920, which the Poles won and thus regained 20 years of independence for Poland. In more than 300 years of military conflict with Russia, the Poles have only managed to win once – and that was then.

Since last year, Poles have been looking eastwards with anxiety once more. A common belief held here since the 19th century maintains that, without Ukraine, Russia is not a threat to Poland. But when Ukraine is dominated by Russia, the Poles are next. They usually were.

Adam Leszczyński (Gazeta Wyborcza)

Italy

What do Italians mean when they say they are afraid? The perceived threat of al-Qaida is strong after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, especially after Islamic State said it wanted to infiltrate Europe by its jihadis posing as refugees and Italy’s foreign minister, Paolo Gentiloni, admitted that this threat was real.

But, in a country with record high unemployment of 13.4%, scholars argue that it is economic uncertainty – not terrorism – that keeps people up at night (and immigrants actually have a positive effect, contributing an estimated 8.8% of gross domestic product).

According to Nicola Piepoli, a pollster, it is the lack of a future that is scaring Italians. “A quarter of the population is worried that future generations will not be as well off as we are,” he said. “Terrorism creates anxiety, but less than half of respondents are really pessimistic. In fact, there’s a general hope that Italy will be spared in this holy war. The most interesting fact, however, is that people are more upbeat now compared with the same period last year. Today, two out of three people feel optimistic about the future compared with one out of two people in 2014.”

For the past three years, research has shown that insecurity is the shadow hanging over our society, regardless of whether those dangers are real or only perceived. The national mood hit a low point in 2012 amid a chronic recession. A report on the perception of insecurity published by Demos that year found that 40% of Italians experienced a high level of “absolute” insecurity and that 50% were afraid of unemployment (8 percentage points higher than in 2011). From that point on, this trend has remained constant, and other classic fears, of crime and immigration, for example, remain on the back burner.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Migrants during a rescue operation by Italian navy off Sicily in in the operation called Mare Nostrum. Photograph: /Reuters

Certainly, compared with last year, the issue of immigration is bubbling up (3% more think immigrants threaten public order, 7% more believe they threaten Italian culture and identity, while 45% prefer for them to be blocked from entering the country rather than being welcomed, along the lines of the Mare Nostrum operation which ended last October).

In data collected by Ipsos Italy, pollster Nando Pagnoncelli sees a clear trend: Italians are chiefly concerned about the economy and jobs. At least 90% who were interviewed talked about economic issues; in second place were the social safety net, welfare and pensions. The Charlie Hebdo attacks were a terrifying reminder of the terror threat but, said Pagnoncelli, “crime and immigration are fears mentioned by one out of 10 people who are interviewed. Terrorism has an emotionally strong impact but remains far from our peoples’ everyday lives”.

Francesca Paci (La Stampa)

Spain

If the masked gunmen who entered the Charlie Hebdo offices hoped that their action would reverberate beyond the frontiers of France, they unfortunately achieved their goal. Fears of a jihadi attack in Spain have risen since the killings last month in France – perhaps unsurprising for a country that has already experienced terrorism first-hand and on a greater scale.

A survey carried out six days after the attack on the French satirical magazine found that some 58% of Spaniards believed that a repeat of the attack in Madrid on 11 March 2004, which killed 192 people and wounded 1,858, was likely. Asked the same question two years ago, only 31% were of this opinion. A further 64% questioned last month thought an attack on a specific target, similar to the one in Paris, was likely to be carried out in Spain.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A shrine at Atocha railway station in Madrid after the 2004 train bombings Photograph: Paul White/AP

Along with an increase in fears of terrorism, the Metroscopia poll also noted a rise in support for the military defeat of jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq. This sentiment crosses the political spectrum and party affiliation, it found.

The sense of insecurity and the desire for military action appear to go hand-in-hand. This is a big change: in September 2014, 75% of Spaniards questioned said diplomacy was the best way forward.

That poll was carried out at the time when the International Conference on Peace and Security in Iraq was being held in Paris. On that occasion, some 30 countries agreed to “use all means necessary to effectively fight against the Islamic State”, including “appropriate military support”. And on that occasion, perhaps with memories of the failed invasion of Iraq, Spain still preferred diplomatic to military means. Now, it appears, it is arguably another recollection – that of bombed-out train carriages in Madrid – that seems to be uppermost in our minds.

Ana Carbajosa (El País)