What does it mean to be creepy?

Leon Della Bosca

8 years ago

Frank McAndrew and Sara Koehnke from Know College in Illinois specialise in ‘creepy’, and now, after a comprehensive study on the subject, they’ve co-authored a paper called On the Nature of Creepiness, which goes into great detail about all the factors that make a person creepy.

So, what does it mean to be a creepy person? Well, that’s what these intrepid researchers wanted to find out, so they asked 1341 people between 18 and 77 to list all the things that they thought made a person creepy, including their jobs, hobbies, mannerisms and behaviour.

The creepiest personality traits a person can have include:

standing too close to someone

having unkempt hair

smiling weirdly

dressing in odd clothes

having bulging eyes

having long fingers

having bags under eyes

licking lips frequently

laughing out of context

oversharing or talking loudly about uncomfortable topics, including sex

displaying unwanted sexual interest

asking to take a pictures of strangers

But being creepy is not limited to personality. Hobbies of the terminally creepy include collecting things such as dolls, insects and fingernails, or activities such as bird watching or other voyeuristic pursuits such as photography.

And what do creepy people do for a living? Well, being a clown topped the list (as if we didn’t already know that one!), followed by taxidermists, sex-shop owners, funeral directors and, believe it or not, taxi drivers. Unemployed people were sixth on the list of creepy occupations, which is ironic, as it’s not really an occupation, is it? Interestingly, writers were deemed the 11th creepiest occupation.

Oh, and men are creepier than women, but that may have been another no-brainer.

The study was published in New Ideas in Psychology and was undertaken to discover whether the feeling of being ‘creeped out’ could actually be quantified in some way. The results of the study were consistent with the hypothesis that a person’s ‘creep metre’ is ‘an evolved adaptive emotional response’ to the ambiguity of threat.

“Creepiness is all about not being able to figure out whether there is a threat,” said researcher Frank McAndrew.

Do you ever feel ‘creeped out’ by people? Can you explain why, even when it’s not so obvious? Do you think, in the modern world, creepiness is a lost art?

Read the full report (it’s really quite interesting)