A 2023 study claimed to have found the primary reason for people’s fear of clowns. Veuer’s Matt Hoffman has the story.
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00:00This Halloween, you might encounter some scary clowns among the creepy costumed characters.
00:05Ever wonder what it is that makes clowns frightening? A 2023 study claims to have
00:09the answer. The study was published in Frontiers in Psychology in February of last year. The
00:15researchers had 528 subjects fill out a questionnaire related to fear of clowns,
00:19or coulrophobia. The results showed that the number one reason for this fear was hidden
00:24emotional signals. As Baylor College of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Behavioral Sciences professor
00:29Dr. Asim Shah put it to Yahoo! Life, the gaudy makeup can cause that fear when you hide the
00:34whole face. People are afraid because they can't see the person behind it. However,
00:39the number two reason for this fear was negative media portrayals, which is to say that people
00:44think clowns are scary because they've seen so many scary clowns in movies and on TV.
00:49The lowest ranked reason was having had a real-life frightening experience with a clown.
00:53So if it makes you feel any better, most of those red-nosed jokers don't actually mean you any harm.