In a U.S. survey of 806 adults, 54% said they'd rather go to the dentist than sit in the middle seat of a crowded airplane.
The survey was commissioned by 3M to publicize its privacy filters for laptop screens. Statistically, dentists and middle seats were almost in a dead heat, since the margin of error at the 95% confidence level was ± 3.5.
The dental visit ranked slightly below getting stuck in traffic or going on a blind date; 56% of the respondents preferred either of those experiences to the middle seat.
The survey is just the latest in which dental visits were cast as the standard for unpleasant quotidian experiences.
Last year, iVillage published a poll of 1,004 people in which 27% of respondents (± 3) preferred having "a tooth drilled at the dentist" than clean their homes.
And a 1992 Yanklovitch Partners poll finding that more people would rather visit their dentist than a car dealer has recently gotten news attention as auto dealers search for ways to improve their reputations.
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