Not many people know this, but there is a difference between scary and creepy. When you are scared the brain sees a distinct threat. But when you are creeped out, there is likely no distinct threat.
The New American Oxford Dictionary’s definition of creepy is “causing an unpleasant feeling of fear or unease.” This feeling is something you get when you are afraid of something, but there is no clear threat; in other words, a feeling of ambiguity. This keeps the brain from achieving a fight or flight reaction. James Geer, a psychologist, developed the Fear Survey Schedule 2 found in the book The Mind Test by Rita Aero and Elliot Weiner. The poll surveyed what things people were most scared of: suffocation, failing a test, injury or death of a loved one, one’s own death, being self-conscious, not being successful, snakes, nuclear war, public speaking, looking foolish, terrorist attacks, spiders, war, making mistakes, loneliness, gang/criminal violence and the future.
I conducted Geer’s poll on 14 people from the middle school, a mixture of kids and adults, boys and girls. This was not a scientific study per se, but I noticed that people in his poll and mine are afraid of things that may, and in some cases will, happen in the future. In my poll the top six fears were: suffocation, failing tests, injury or death of a loved one, one’s own death and terrorist attacks. Potential events in our future are often vague and cause a sense of ambiguity.
Creepiness has not been researched thoroughly, but scientists are able to find the stimuli through experiments. One of the main stimuli for creepy feelings is masks. Have you ever wondered why you are scared of or disturbed by clowns or horror movie masks? This is because masks hide the true emotions of a being and their intentions. This confuses the brain. Another stimulus may be the theory of uncanny valley, which is when a human’s appearance is altered slightly to come off as disturbing.
To test how people react to the stimuli mentioned above, I created and conducted an experiment on five subjects, two boys and three girls and a mix of ages. My central goal for this experiment was to see how people of different gender and age reacted to creepy stimuli, and how they would react if I increased the stimuli. I predicted that as I increased stimuli, the subjects would get significantly more nervous because their brain would not know how to react.
The experiment had three parts. I took notes on their behavior during each part. After each part I asked them three feelings they felt during the experiment. The first part had the subject sitting in a room blindfolded while listening to music designed to make the brain feel uncomfortable. After two minutes I placed a hand on their shoulder and recorded their reaction. For the other two parts, I had the subject sit and listen to more music while looking at a set of ten pictures, a different set for each part, using both uncanny valley and masks.
For the first part, the younger subjects were relatively calm but would grimace when the music changed. After asking them what they felt, the average response was that the music was suspenseful, and that it made them uncomfortable. This may show that the music, containing minor keys and sudden note transitions with no beat, may have caused them to feel uncomfortable. The blindfold may have created a feeling of vagueness. For the second part, a common theme between all the subjects was that all of them fidgeted and started playing with something i.e. a ring or the cord of headphones. The average response was that they felt creeped out.
For the final part, most of the subjects reacted the same but with more noticeable nervous behavior. They would play with the cord even more, move their feet and head, and move away from the screen. These reactions show they were more nervous and anxious. Their responses were similar to one another and slightly delayed. Their thoughts included “scared, macabre, and freaked.” An adult subject said that he had “thoughts of death.” These things all tell me that the third part creates a feeling of insecurity and danger, similar to uncanny valley.
What struck me most was the delay in responses as the experiment progressed. After a subject went through the first part, their thoughts came out fluently. During the second and especially the third, where the stimulus was increased, their thoughts became jumbled and delayed. Some subjects also had a hard time coming up with words to describe what they were feeling.
Based on the results I have gathered, it appears that when people are faced with a situation with no apparent danger or apparent safety, it triggers confusion in the brain. This supports my hypothesis. The brain is a complicated part of the body and there is much to learn. But we are learning that sometimes, whether we can help it or not, our brain simply doesn’t know what to do. So, next time you see or hear something and you feel the urge to say, “That’s creepy,” remember where real creepiness comes from: true confusion and the unknown.
