Are you afraid of clowns? You are not alone. Coulrophobia, or fear of clowns, is a widely recognized phenomenon.

Studies indicate that this fear is present among both adults and children in many different cultures. However, it is not well understood due to the lack of specific research.

Although numerous possible explanations had been proposed for the phobia in academic literatureno study had specifically investigated its origins.

So we set out to discover the reasons why people are scared of clowns and understanding the psychology behind it. We also wanted to explore how common fear of clowns is in adults and look at the severity of the fear in those who reported it.

To this end, we designed a psychometric questionnaire to evaluate the prevalence and severity of coulrophobia. Quiz on fear of clowns It was completed with an international sample of 987 people aged between 18 and 77 years.

More than half of those surveyed (53.5 percent) said they were afraid of clowns at least to some extent, and 5 percent said they were “very afraid” of them.

Curiously, this percentage that declares they have an extreme fear of clowns is slightly higher than the those reported for many other phobiassuch as animals (3.8 percent), blood/injections/wounds (3.0 percent), heights (2.8 percent), stagnant water or weather events (2.3 percent), enclosed spaces (2, 2 percent) and flights (1.3 percent).

We also discovered that women are more afraid of clowns than men. The reason for this difference is not clear, but echoes research results about other phobias such as fear of snakes and spiders.

We also found that coulrophobia decreases with age, which again coincides with research on other fears.

Origins of this fear

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

This new set of questions relates to eight plausible explanations for the origins of this fear, as follows:

1. An eerie or unsettling feeling due to clowns’ makeup that makes them look not quite human. A similar response is sometimes seen with dolls or mannequins.
2. The exaggerated facial features of clowns convey a direct sense of threat.
3. Clown makeup hides emotional signals and generates uncertainty.
4. The color of clown makeup reminds us of death, an infection or a blood injury and evokes disgust or avoidance.
5. The unpredictable behavior of clowns makes us uncomfortable.
6. The fear of clowns has been learned by family members.
7. Negative representations of clowns in popular culture.
8. A terrifying experience with a clown.

Interestingly, we found that the final explanation, having had a terrifying 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 were a much larger contributing factor to coulrophobia.

This is understandable since some of the most notable clowns in books and movies are designed to be scary, such as Pennywise, the creepy clown from Stephen King’s 1986 novel. He. (This character recently appeared in two films in 2017 and 2019with Bill Skarsgård in the lead role.)

However, some people are afraid of Ronald McDonald, the fast food chain’s mascot, and it’s not meant to scare you. This suggests that there might be something more fundamental about the appearance of clowns that makes people uneasy.

In fact, the strongest factor we identified was hidden emotional cues, suggesting that for many people, fear of clowns arises from not being able to see their facial expressions due to their makeup.

We cannot see their “true” faces and therefore cannot understand their emotional intent.

So, for example, we don’t know if they are frowning or scowling, which would indicate anger. Not being able to detect what a clown is thinking or what he might do next makes us nervous when we are around him.

This research has provided new insights into why people are afraid of clowns; but there are still questions to be resolved.

For example, if makeup that masks emotions causes fear, do people who have their faces painted like animals also create the same type of effect? Or is there something more particular in the makeup of clowns that generates this fear? This is now the focus of our continued research.

Sophie ScoreyPhD researcher, University of South Wales; James GrevilleProfessor of Psychology, University of South Wales; Philip TysonAssociate Professor of Psychology, University of South Walesand Shakiela DaviesProfessor of Clinical Psychology and Mental Health, University of South Wales

This article is republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A version of this article was first published in March 2023.