Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

https://theconversation.com/why-are-we-s...red-199352

EXCERPTS: . . .Coulrophobia, or the fear of clowns, is a widely acknowledged phenomenon. Studies indicate this fear is present among both adults and children in many different cultures. Yet it is not well understood due to a lack of focused research.

[...] we set out to discover the reasons people are frightened by clowns, and to understand the psychology behind this. We also wanted to explore how common the fear of clowns is in adults and to look at the severity of the fear in those who reported it.

To do this, we devised a psychometric questionnaire to assess the prevalence and severity of coulrophobia. The Fear of Clowns Questionnaire was completed by an international sample of 987 people aged between 18 and 77.

[...] We also found that women are more afraid of clowns than men. The reason for this difference is not clear, but it echoes research findings on other phobias such as the fear of snakes and spiders. We also discovered coulrophobia decreases with age, which again matches up with research into other fears.

[...] Our next step was to explore the origins of people’s fear of clowns. A follow-up questionnaire was given to the 53.5% who had reported at least some degree of clown fear...

[...] Intriguingly, we found the final explanation, of having had a scary personal experience with a clown, had the lowest level of agreement. This indicates that life experience alone is not a sufficient explanation for why people are afraid of them.

In contrast, negative portrayals of clowns in popular culture was a much stronger contributing factor towards coulrophobia...

[...] However, some people are afraid of Ronald McDonald, the fast food chain mascot, and he is not meant to scare you. This suggests there might be something more fundamental about the way clowns look that unsettles people.

In fact the strongest factor we identified was hidden emotional signals, suggesting that for many people, a fear of clowns stems from not being able to see their facial expressions due to their make-up... (MORE - missing details)

I'd assume that coulrophobia was down to early development of sensory perception when a baby.

Observation of the world would likely be out of focus and even difficult to comprehend what is being looked at (consider the development of both neurons and axioms require time to build up and would be needed to process the finer points of detailing).

Peoples faces, especially those with makeup would be difficult to gauge how to truly perceive them and not being able to understand what is being seen would likely cause synesthesiac anxiety (Sensory confusion) which in turn wouldn't be understood how to cope with.

As a baby grows into a toddler, people become more recognisable but any seeded fears and synesthesia would likely be trigger when approximation of what had been memories is seen (in this case, the face of a clown)

The same logic can then be applied to arachnophobia, if a spider entered a crib it and was close to a baby, it would be in more focus than the world around it and likely leave a scary imprint/memory.

I'm not afraid of clowns (except the killer clowns from horror movies), but I do find clowns to be faintly creepy.

Part of it is that they are bizarre and that's creepy by its nature. Weird caricatures of normal humanity. (Kind of like "transsexuals" in that regard, people that I find even more creepy.)

And part of it is how their manic happiness is just so... fake. That's creepy too.

If you are in a group of people who seem to think clowns or an individual clown is funny and you don't then you are the odd one out and its going to happen whenever there are clowns around. You might get clowns escaping from circuses - otherwise normally encountered while in a group of people. I do not seek out clowns.

I’ve only known one professional clown in my life and he ended up being arrested for molesting young boys. We used to wonder why he always had a young boy as an assistant for his magic shows. Feel we let those kids down but assumed parents were ok with it.

Speaking of pro party clowns I remember a courtroom show were a woman sued a guy because he frightened the daylights out of every kid at a birthday party. You wouldn’t think a goof dressed like Papa Smurf could do that, except this pretend Lilliputian was 6’ 10” tall. She won the case and judge recommended he take up a new line of work.

Some are good at balloon dog making.