Monday, October 28, 2019

What occupations and characteristics are creepy?


At Psychology Today on May 19, 2015 there was an article by  psychologist Francis T. McAndrew titled How we decide who’s creepy. Then in 2016 there was a detailed article by Francis T. McAndrew and Sara S. Koehnke titled On the nature of creepiness at New Ideas in Psychology (Volume 42, pages 10 to 15). You can download it here. They did an online survey of 1341 adults at a liberal arts college in the Midwestern U. S. But there were 1029 females, and only 312 males - almost 3.3 times as many females as males. McAndrew also has a bibliography of his writings about creepiness.



















As shown above, the four creepiest occupations were clown, taxidermist, sex shop owner, and funeral director.



















As also is shown above, the three creepiest characteristics were talking a lot about clothes, being extremely thin, and being dressed too formally for the situation. Based on them you would expect a model to be very creepy - except that the fourth creepiest characteristic was not looking you in the eye.    

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