(ORDO NEWS) — Researchers from the UK have found out why some children and adults suffer from coulrophobia – the fear of clowns. The main reason turned out to be rather unexpected.
Coulrophobia is a little-studied phenomenon that is not on the ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases) list of WHO, but there is research showing that the fear of clowns is widespread.
At the same time, the study of the causes of the phobia itself was not carried out.
Scientists from the School of Psychology and Therapeutic Research at the University of South Wales (UK) decided to correct this shortcoming and conducted a literature review and interviewed 987 participants from 52 countries, most of whom, however, lived in England.
Of these, 790 (80 percent) were women, 197 (20 percent) were men, and the age range of the subjects was from 18 to 72 years.
A total of 528 volunteers (53.5 percent) reported that they were afraid of clowns to some extent, five that they had a real phobia.
It turned out that the fear of clowns was more pronounced among the participants than other phobias (for example, heights, blood and injections, enclosed spaces, flying). Women were more prone to coulrophobia than men. Another conclusion: with age, this fear weakened.
Scientists have also managed to shed light on the causes of coulrophobia.
To find out about them, the researchers developed a questionnaire that included the following answers about the causes of fear: specific coloring of clowns, which makes them look not like people, but like dolls; hypertrophied facial features; bright makeup that hides the true emotions of a person; the color of the makeup of clowns is associated with the “coloring” of the corpse, reminds of blood loss and causes disgust; unpredictable behavior of artists; transmission of coulrophobia from other family members; the negative portrayal of clowns in popular culture; frightening experience with the animator.
The option about transmitting the phobia from another family member had the lowest response rate, and one of the highest was about the negative portrayal of clowns in popular culture (take Pennywise from Stephen King’s It).
But the most powerful factor was not even the frightening make-up of the clowns, but the fact that his real emotions were not visible under it, so those around him could not understand the intentions of the artist.
It remains unclear whether people are afraid of animators in animal costumes or with painted faces of animals. The researchers intend to study this problem in more depth.
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