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CLOWN THERAPY
Clown Therapy while interesting, is so frightening to most patients, even though we don't know if it works, how it works, or what it works for even, we still use it as Adam needs a job.
Clown-like characters have been around for thousands of years. Historically, jesters and clowns have been a vehicle for satire and poking fun at powerful people. They provided a safety valve for letting off steam and granted unique freedom of expression—as long as their value as entertainers outweighed the discomfort they caused higher-ups.
Jesters and others persons of ridicule date back at least as far as ancient Egypt. The English word “clown” first appeared in the 1500s, when Shakespeare used the term to describe foolish characters in several of his plays. The now familiar circus clown—with painted face, wig, and oversized clothing—arose in the 19th century and has changed little during the past 150 years.
The trope of the evil clown is nothing new, either: Earlier this year, writer Benjamin Radford published Bad Clowns, which traces the evolution of clowns into unpredictable, menacing creatures. The persona of the creepy clown came into its own after serial killer John Wayne Gacywas captured. In the 1970s, Gacy appeared at children’s birthday parties as Pogo the Clown and also regularly painted pictures of clowns. When the authorities discovered that he had killed at least 33 people, burying most of them in the crawl space of his suburban Chicago home, the connection between clowns and dangerous psychopathicbehavior became forever fixed in Americans' collective unconscious.
Psychology can help explain why clowns—the supposed purveyors of jokes and pranks—often end up sending chills down our spines. My research was the first empirical study of creepiness. I had a hunch that feeling creeped out might have something to do with ambiguity—about not really being sure how to react to a person or situation.
We recruited 1,341 volunteers, ranging in age from 18 to 77, to complete an online survey. In the first section of the survey, participants rated the likelihood that a hypothetical “creepy person” would exhibit 44 different behaviors, such as unusual patterns of eye contact or physical characteristics like visible tattoos. In the second section, participants rated the creepiness of 21 different occupations. In the third section they simply listed two hobbies that they thought were creepy. In the final section, participants noted how much they agreed with 15 statements about the nature of creepy people.
The results indicate that people we perceive as creepy are much more likely to be male than female (as are most clowns), that unpredictability is an important component of creepiness, and that unusual patterns of eye contact and other nonverbal behaviors set off our creepiness detectors.
DID YOU FIND THIS THERAPY HELPFUL?
Unusual or strange physical characteristics such as bulging eyes, a peculiar smile, or inordinately long fingers did not, in and of themselves, cause us to perceive someone as creepy. But the presence of weird physical traits can amplify other creepy tendencies that a person may exhibit, such as persistently steering conversations toward peculiar sexual topics or failing to understand a policy that does not permit people to bring reptiles into the office.
When we asked people to rate the creepiness of different occupations, the one that rose to the top of the creep list was, you guessed it: Clowns.
The results are consistent with my theory that feeling “creeped out” is a response to the ambiguity of threat, and that it is only when we are confronted with uncertainty about that threat that we get the chills.
For example, it would be considered rude and strange to run away in the middle of a conversation with someone who is sending out a creepy vibe, but who is actually harmless. At the same time, it could be perilous to ignore your intuition and engage with that individual if he is, in fact, a threat. The ambivalence leaves you frozen in place, wallowing in discomfort. This reaction could be adaptive, something humans have evolved to feel, meaning that being creeped out is a way to maintain vigilance during a potentially dangerous situation. In light of our study’s results, it is not at all surprising that we find clowns creepy. Rami Nader, a Canadian psychologist who studies coulrophobia, or the irrational fear of clowns, believes that clown phobias are fueled by the fact that clowns wear makeup and disguises that hide their true identity and feelings. It has been estimated that approximately 2% of adults have a fear of clowns.
This is consistent with my hypothesis that the inherent ambiguity surrounding clowns makes them creepy. They seem happy, but we don't know if they really are. And they’re mischievous, which puts us constantly on guard. When we interact with a clown during one of his routines, we don't know if we're about to get a pie in the face or be the victim of another humiliating prank. The highly unusual physical characteristics of the clown (the wig, the big red nose, the makeup, the odd clothing) only magnify the uncertainty of what he might do next.
There are certainly other types of people who creep us out—taxidermists and undertakers are also high on the creepy occupation spectrum. But they have their work cut out for them if they aspire to the level of creepiness we attribute to clowns. In other words, they have big shoes to fill.