Chapman's 2026 fear survey: AI joins 10 findings on what Americans dread

Most people can name the worry that follows them to bed, even if they would never mention it at dinner. Some anxieties feel as old as childhood, such as the dark or deep water. Others arrive with the news cycle or with a new tool that appears on a phone screen one morning. Dread can shape how people vote, what they buy, which risks they accept, and how close they keep their families. A clear picture of what the public fears offers a window into the pressures people carry through ordinary days, pressures that polls about policy or prices can miss.

Public unease moves with the headlines. A concern that drew little notice one year can surge the next after a crisis abroad or a technological leap at home, then recede once the urgency passes. Other preoccupations hold steady through good years and bad, and their staying power reveals something durable about what Americans value. A single snapshot can mistake a temporary spike for a lasting change, or overlook a quiet discomfort that never reaches the front page. A measurement repeated year after year can show which concerns climb, which fade, and which never budge. Repetition exposes the point at which a brand-new category of alarm earns a seat beside the old standbys, the kind of arrival a one-time poll would struggle to recognize as anything more than a passing mood.

The Chapman University Survey of American Fears, now in its 12th annual edition, sets out to capture those patterns. The university's Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences runs the project, and undergraduates work alongside faculty members on the analysis. NORC fielded the survey through its probability-based AmeriSpeak panel. Researchers track the same subjects across years to learn which ones rise or fall, which persist, and how apprehension plays out in everyday life. The 2026 edition broke new ground by posing several separate questions about artificial intelligence for the first time. The university's newsroom report does not publish a complete ranked list. The 10 findings below draw on the figures, ranks, and expert commentary the release does provide.

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Government corruption remained the country's leading fear in 2026, with 61.1% of respondents reporting it. More than three in five Americans carry this worry about the people and institutions running their government. No other concern in the 2026 results, old or new, drew a larger share.

Corruption held the No. 1 spot again, as it did in 2025. Other fears climbed, fell, or entered the top 10 for the first time this year. This one stayed put through all of that movement. Its persistence points to a source steadier than any single year's headlines.

Even the anxieties that surged in 2026 finished behind corruption. Dread of U.S. involvement in another world war jumped in the standings, and biological warfare and terrorist attacks both joined the top 10. None of those shifts dislodged distrust of public officials. Newer worries appear to be stacking on top of concern about government misconduct without displacing it.

Corruption also differs in kind from the threats trailing it. War, terrorism, and disease strike from outside a person's control. Corruption describes a failure within the institutions charged with protecting the public from those dangers. Respondents placed it ahead of the possibility of a family member suffering a serious illness, a worry rooted in their own households.

Artificial intelligence finished below corruption in its first year among the top 10, even with two separate AI items on the list. Both AI concerns drew smaller shares than worry about officials abusing their power.

A fear that holds first place through a year of rising war anxiety and the debut of artificial intelligence on the list resembles a settled judgment about how government works. Any official or candidate hoping to address what Americans dread most faces a worry about the integrity of government itself, ahead of foreign wars and new machines.

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The prospect of U.S. involvement in another world war alarmed 58% of Americans in 2026, a level of dread that only government corruption surpassed. More than half of the public, in other words, worried about the country getting drawn into hostilities on a global scale, a striking share for an event that has not occurred.

The war scenario sat sixth among the country's fears in 2025. A year later it had climbed to second. The newsroom report traces no other fear's progress from one numbered position to another, which makes the war item the clearest measure of change in this year's results. The leap carried the threat of global conflict from the middle of the pack to the slot beneath the top spot.

Movement on this scale in a single year points to a concern that responds to events abroad. Durable dreads tend to hold their ground, while reactive ones climb when the news darkens and can slide back once it brightens. The war item now resembles the second kind, and a future edition will show whether it keeps its altitude.

Conflict abroad outpaced both AI threats in 2026. A larger share of adults named a world war as a fear than cited AI disrupting the political process or the economy. Artificial intelligence supplied the year's newest headline, yet war still reached more people. Novelty did not translate into breadth.

The country's two most prevalent fears point in opposite directions. Corruption turns attention inward, toward government at home. A world war turns that attention outward, toward the chance that the U.S. gets pulled into fighting overseas. Only a slim margin separated the two in 2026. The threat beyond U.S. borders now rivals the one inside them in the public mind. The results caught Americans uneasy about their own institutions and about the wider world at once.

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Worry that artificial intelligence could damage the political process gripped 51.9% of Americans in 2026, enough to claim third place in Chapman's results. The concern helped carry AI into the survey's top 10 for the first time, and no other AI item in the release climbed as high. More than half the public shares this unease, which places it outside the realm of a fringe preoccupation held by a few technology skeptics.

Two older threats outpaced it, and no others did. Government corruption and U.S. involvement in another world war held the first and second spots. Two of the three most widespread fears in the survey, corruption and AI's reach into politics, turn on the integrity of government. The pattern suggests Americans in 2026 viewed threats to self-rule as no less pressing than conflict abroad.

The newcomer beat the other arrivals on the list. Biological warfare and terrorist attacks broke into the top 10 this year, yet neither claimed a spot among the three highest. A technology fear outdrew two long-familiar security threats in its debut year.

Concern for family landed a hair below the political worry. The share of respondents afraid of a loved one falling seriously ill came in a fraction under the AI figure, and dread of a loved one dying sat a little lower. Americans placed the threat AI poses to public life on about the same footing as threats to the people closest to them. A worry new to the top 10 drew level with one of the most personal fears the survey measures.

The economic version of the AI fear settled in seventh place. Set beside it, the political concern emerges as the sharper of the two technology worries. Respondents seemed more unsettled by what AI could do to civic life than by what it could do to the economy. The public's first major AI anxiety centers on how the country governs itself.

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Fear that artificial intelligence will damage the economy claimed seventh place in Chapman's 2026 results, with 49.7% of respondents reporting it. The share falls a fraction short of half the public, leaving economic dread about AI within striking distance of a majority.

Even a lower slot in this year's top 10 reflects alarm across a vast swath of the country. Every subject ranked above the economic question drew a share at least as large. Each of the six most common concerns in Chapman's results therefore unsettled close to half of Americans or more, a sign of how far apprehension reached across the public this year.

The economic item hands AI a second foothold among the year's 10 most common fears. Alongside concern over AI harming the political process, it means roughly half of American adults view the technology as a threat to their politics or their economy. Two of the survey's top 10 slots belong to a single technology, one touching the ballot box and the other the marketplace.

A narrow margin separates the economic anxiety from its political counterpart, which finished four places higher. The fears Chapman ranked fourth through sixth all landed in the thin band between the two AI items. The tight spacing suggests Americans regard AI as a hazard to more than one pillar of American public life at once. It also means a small shift in opinion could reshuffle the middle of the list in a future edition of the survey.

Financial stability also appears among the worries that persisted this year. Economic unease reaches respondents from two directions as a result, one familiar and one new. The older strain concerns financial security, while the newer one centers on a suspicion that AI could unsettle the wider economy. Many Americans carry a technological threat to their livelihoods on top of a familiar financial one.

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A slim majority of Americans, 51.8%, said the thought of someone they love becoming seriously ill left them afraid or very afraid.

The question centers on another person's health, someone the respondent cares about, and not on the respondent's own body. Concern over a loved one's well-being holds its own beside the artificial intelligence concerns that broke into the top 10 this year. A crisis confined to one household stirs fear on par with threats aimed at the country's politics and paychecks.

Chapman's release counts worry about loved ones among the worries that persisted in 2026, alongside anxiety over financial stability. Its staying power separates it from apprehension over another world war, which jumped within a single year. Both sit close to home, tied to the health and finances of a household instead of events in government or abroad.

Nothing about this risk depends on a headline. Elections, wars, and new software neither create the possibility of a serious diagnosis nor remove it. Anyone who loves another person carries some exposure to it, whatever the year brings.

Answers at the afraid or very afraid level reflect genuine alarm, a stronger reaction than passing unease. More than half the public reported that level of feeling about an illness that has not happened and may never happen. The figure measures anticipation, the weight of a possibility carried in the background of daily life.

A private dread shared by more than half the country forms a steady floor beneath the national scares that rise and fall around it.

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The prospect of someone they love dying leaves 50.6% of Americans afraid or very afraid. This dread has no link to Washington, foreign conflict, or new software, yet it reaches about half the country. Four fears with published figures drew larger shares: government corruption, another world war, AI's threat to the political process, and a loved one's serious illness. AI's harm to the economy, the only other quantified fear, fell below it, a sign that a private loss can weigh on people as much as a public threat.

Christopher Bader, Ph.D., a professor of sociology who founded the survey, treats this concern as a fixture of American life. "What I'm seeing more and more over time is that our fear about our loved ones is going to always be there, no matter what's going on in the world," Bader said. Bader's phrase "more and more over time" signals a pattern that has built across multiple editions of the survey. His remark sets the item apart from worries whose standing rises and falls with world events or the arrival of a new technology.

The founder's reading turns the 50.6% figure into a baseline. It marks the portion of Americans who carry this worry into any year, whatever the news brings. A spike in alarm over war or AI shifts the national mood. A steady anxiety about losing family describes a lasting condition of private life.

Chapman's report on the 2026 results frames concern for loved ones as a persistent theme, set against a year in which fear of another world war climbed and many other fears declined. Worry about loved ones held its high level in the same year AI pushed into the top 10. A jump in any public fear says more about the moment than about the attachments Americans guard year after year.

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Biological warfare and terrorist attacks both broke into Americans' top 10 fears in Chapman's 2026 results, two threats that had sat outside that group a year earlier.

Worry about the conflict with Iran might explain both arrivals, according to Christopher Bader, Ph.D., a professor of sociology and the survey's founder. He tied the climb in fear of another world war to the same possible cause. Bader stopped short of calling the link proven, and his hedge leaves room for other forces behind the shift.

The three fears Bader grouped describe harm that starts far from any single household and could reach many people at once, through combat, weaponized disease, or attacks on civilians. Their rise in the same year points to a public whose anxieties leaned toward mass-casualty dangers. All three trace back, in Bader's reading, to one conflict abroad.

Bader drew the opposite picture of worries about loved ones, which he expects to persist no matter what happens in the world. Set side by side, his two observations suggest two kinds of fear, one that answers to the headlines and one that holds steady regardless of them. The newcomers belong to the first camp, which makes their staying power an open question for future editions.

Neither newcomer arrived with a published share of respondents. Simple elimination still narrows their placement. With other fears holding first, second, third, and seventh, the pair must occupy two of the remaining six places, beneath the AI worry about politics. Whatever their exact spots, both outranked a long list of dangers that never reached the top 10.

Together with the two AI worries, these arrivals claimed at least four of the 10 spots for fears missing from the 2025 list. At least as many concerns that held a top 10 place in 2025 had to drop out to make room, evidence of how much one year reshuffled the public's anxieties.

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Abundant clean energy, medicine that extends life, and people working alongside robots in manufacturing all drew more hope than fear from Americans in Chapman's 2026 results. Each of the three describes a gain for the people who would live with it. Clean power expands supply, life-extending treatments add years, and factory robots share the labor with a human crew. None of the three asks anyone to surrender something they hold.

Americans judged emerging technologies by how someone might apply them, and the verdict shifted with the use. Artificial intelligence shows the split. Chapman's 2026 results place AI's potential harm to politics and to the economy among Americans' 10 biggest fears. Robots working beside people on a shop floor stirred optimism in the same survey. The wording of the hopeful item matters. It pictures machines as partners on the line, with the human worker in place.

Seth Benzell, Ph.D., an assistant professor of business and economics, tied the pattern to capability. He said people tend to warm to technologies that widen what they can accomplish. "When you frame it as AI or robots that are going to allow you to build something that you weren't able to do before … those get people a lot more excited," Benzell said. His framing links the three hopeful items. Each one hands people a capacity they lacked, whether more electricity, longer lives, or extra hands in the plant.

A single tool can sit behind a dreaded outcome and a welcome one. AI drew fear in Chapman's results when respondents pictured it harming the political process or the economy. Benzell said the same technology, cast as a building tool, gets people enthusiastic. The fears cluster around damage to institutions and livelihoods, and the hopes gather around new abilities. The purpose people attach to a technology appears to steer their response more than the tool itself does.

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People who use artificial intelligence often told Chapman's researchers they felt less afraid of it, a pattern that ties regular contact with the tools to a calmer outlook.

Their relative ease complicates the AI results elsewhere in the 2026 survey. Worries about AI harming the political process and hurting the economy both entered Americans' top 10 fears in the same year. Those headline results describe the public as a whole. The user pattern shows the unease does not sit in equal measure across the population.

Adults who make AI part of their routine voice less dread than peers who use it less. The national alarm over the technology, by extension, draws more of its weight from people with limited hands-on exposure than from those who rely on the tools. Public anxiety about AI runs stronger among the people who keep their distance from it.