{"id":67675,"date":"2015-12-26T10:00:50","date_gmt":"2015-12-26T15:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=67675"},"modified":"2015-12-22T00:33:26","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T05:33:26","slug":"what-is-creepiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/12\/26\/what-is-creepiness\/","title":{"rendered":"What is &#8220;creepiness&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/01\/2-1.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-68482\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/01\/2-1-500x143.png\" alt=\"2 (1)\" width=\"500\" height=\"143\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/01\/2-1-500x143.png 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/01\/2-1.png 605w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a>What creeps us out? Psychologists\u00a0Francis McAndrew and Sara Koehnke <a href=\"http:\/\/www.academia.edu\/2465121\/Creepiness\" target=\"_blank\">wanted to know<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Their hypothesis was that\u00a0being creeped out was a signal that something <em>might<\/em> be dangerous. Things we <em>know<\/em> are dangerous scare us\u00a0&#8212;\u00a0no creepiness there &#8212; but if we&#8217;re unsure if we&#8217;re under threat, that&#8217;s when things get creepy.<\/p>\n<p>Think of the vaguely threatening\u00a0doll, not being able to see in a suddenly dark room, footsteps behind you in an isolated place. Creepy, right? We don&#8217;t know for sure that we&#8217;re in danger, but we don&#8217;t feel safe either, and that&#8217;s creepy.<\/p>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 61.787072% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/487729465?et=h2DCJuu3Q898pXU82hhJFg&amp;viewMoreLink=on&amp;sig=0r1jp_isg4kdp6-1VRAF7MsQA3kzAMPKmiyO3hX56dA=\" width=\"526\" height=\"325\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0 0 0 10px; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/487729465\" target=\"_blank\">View image<\/a> | <a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\" target=\"_blank\">gettyimages.com<\/a><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They\u00a0surveyed 1,341 people about what they found creepy and, among their findings, they found that people (1) find it creepy when they can&#8217;t\u00a0predict how someone\u00a0will behave and (2)\u00a0are\u00a0less creeped out if they think they understand a person&#8217;s intentions. Both are consistent with the hypothesis that being unsure about a threat is behind the the feeling of creepiness.<\/p>\n<p>They also hypothesized that people would find men creepy more often than women\u00a0since men are statistically more likely than women to commit violent crimes. In fact, 95% of their respondents agreed that a creepy person was most likely to be a man. This is also consistent with their working definition.<\/p>\n<p>Generally, people who didn&#8217;t or maybe couldn&#8217;t follow social conventions were thought of as creepy:\u00a0people who hadn&#8217;t\u00a0washed their hair in a while, stood closer to other people than was normal, dressed oddly or in dirty clothes, or laughed at unpredictable times.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, people who had taboo hobbies or occupations, ones that spoke to a disregard for being normal, were seen as creepy: taxidermists and funeral directors (both of which handle the dead) and adults who collect dolls\u00a0or dress up like a\u00a0clown (both of which blur the lines between adulthood and childhood)<\/p>\n<p>If people we interact with are willing to break one social rule, or perhaps can&#8217;t help themselves, then who&#8217;s to say they won&#8217;t break a more serious\u00a0one? Creepy.\u00a0Most of their respondents also didn&#8217;t think that creepy people knew that they were creepy, suggesting that they don&#8217;t know they&#8217;re breaking social norms. Even creepier.<\/p>\n<p>McAndrew and Koehnke summarize their results:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"a\">While they may not be overtly threatening, individuals who display unusual\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"a\">nonverbal behaviors&#8230; odd emotional behavior&#8230;\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"a\">or highly distinctive physical characteristics are outside of the norm, and by definition\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"a\">unpredictable. This activates our <span class=\"l6\">\u201ccreepiness detector\u201d and increases <span class=\"l6\">our vigilance as we\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><span class=\"a\">try to discern if there is in fact something to fear or not from the person in question.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Re-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/mentalfloss.com\/node\/69472&amp;as-seen-on-www_curat_io=\" target=\"_blank\">Mental Floss<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What creeps us out? Psychologists\u00a0Francis McAndrew and Sara Koehnke wanted to know. Their hypothesis was that\u00a0being creeped out was a signal that something might be dangerous. Things we know are dangerous scare us\u00a0&#8212;\u00a0no creepiness there &#8212; but if we&#8217;re unsure if we&#8217;re under threat, that&#8217;s when things get creepy. Think of the vaguely threatening\u00a0doll, not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,329,55,10514,3175,675,76],"class_list":["post-67675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-emotion","tag-gender","tag-leisure","tag-norms","tag-psychology","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/01\/212.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67675"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68488,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67675\/revisions\/68488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}