Why Do Clowns Creep People Out?

Scared of clowns? You're not alone — and you may be coulrophobic.

Transcript

00:00Clowns have never been good. I mean, if you go all the way back through history, they

00:13are designed to be pranksters.

00:21If you go to the circus and they pull somebody out of the audience, you know that nothing

00:30good is about to happen. And so there's no reason to expect something good from a clown.

00:36And we get creeped out by things that we can't predict. I've done some research on creepiness

00:42and anybody that's outside of the norm, if they're interacting with you weird, they're

00:48talking about strange things. They're not using eye contact right. That kind of throws

00:53us off. And we don't know if there's anything to fear about the person. But being creeped

00:58out is this heightened state of discomfort. Clowns, by definition, do everything outside

01:05of the norm. You can't tell what they're feeling. They've got a smile painted on their face.

01:10But are they really happy? And all of those things press buttons on our brain that immediately

01:15place us on our guard against them.

01:41There was this guy who dressed like a clown and worked at kids' birthday parties and painted

01:47pictures of clowns. But then they found 33 bodies buried in the crawlspace of his house

01:52in Chicago. And then right after that, all of the movies started. Stephen King's It movie,

01:59horror clowns from outer space. Ronald McDonald is actually getting phased out of commercials

02:14at McDonald's because they're aware that a lot of people are kind of creeped out by clowns,

02:20including Ronald. Part of the thing that I think makes clowns especially creepy is when

02:24they appear out of context. If you go to the circus, you expect to see clowns there.

02:30But when you see one standing under a street light late at night in your neighborhood,

02:35that's creepy because they're not supposed to be there. So in some ways, this whole clown

02:41scare stuff has been very bad for professional clowns because people who might have hired

02:47them for a birthday party or some other event now say, well, maybe we won't do that. We're

02:53going to pony instead.