The Fear of Clowns and a Smile We Cannot Trust
Content warning: This article contains mentions of violence and hyperlinks to true-crime accounts which some readers may find distressing.
Like many who heard the news on the evening of Wednesday 26th August about the passing of actor Tim Curry, grief presented itself in me as reminiscing about his iconic roles throughout my childhood. Across a career spanning film, television, stage, and voice acting, his ability to be magnetic yet menacing, charismatic yet unnerving was undeniable.
Transforming himself again and again, each character as fascinating as the last, Tim Curry was able to portray a diverse plethora of personas. Certainly, his most culturally recognisable role Dr Frank-N-Furter in Rocky Horror is what first comes to minds at the mention of his name – though his penchant for the glorious and camp goes far beyond this one character.
That evening, looking over his filmography, I was suddenly struck with a memory – in fact, one of my earliest ones: being no older than two, in my mum's arms, in the living room, my dad beside us, and our tv in the corner where a flash of a clown face fills the screen. I immediately burst into tears and my parents ‘awww’, amused while they console me. It’s a memory that I’ve always found funny. My mum insists this absolutely couldn't be true, which only makes it funnier.
Though I wouldn’t say that I’m scared of clowns now, I do remember feeling uneasy about their whole deal and persona as a child. Although Curry’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the 1990s adaptation of Stephen King’s IT may have helped cement the sinister killer-clown trope in the mainstream since, the fear of clowns long precedes his performance.
If there’s one thing I always try to work into my articles for Inspire the Mind, it’s talking about movies and stories that I love. As a PhD student, researcher, and generally too-curious-for-her-own-good person, I all too often find myself going down an extra-circular research rabbit hole, prompted by the simple question of “but why?”. This and the reminder of my childhood fear led me down a path of exploring more about the fear of clowns and the neuropsychology behind the phobia.
When Laughter Becomes Fear
An intense fear of clowns is commonly called coulrophobia. Though not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), coulrophobia is recognised and used globally, according to research across the last three decades, and can be classed as a ‘specific phobia’. Research on the prevalence of coulrophobia varies drastically, with some studies suggesting figures as high as 53% of adults in an international sample while others closer to 5% of young adults.
Not everyone who dislikes clowns has a phobia, though. A person may find them creepy without experiencing deep panic or the need to avoid places where one might appear. However, for someone with a specific phobia, even a memory, photograph, film scene, a specific laugh, or the thought of a clown may trigger sweating, panic, nausea, a racing heart, or an urgent desire to escape (Anyone remember Phil from Modern Family and his fear of clowns?).
So, why does the children’s entertainer associated with parties and laughter inspire such a powerful, dreadful response?
A Face We Cannot Read
A recent study by Tyson and colleagues investigated possible explanations for the origins of clown fear. Their findings revealed that theories primarily centred around three key aspects: physical appearance, behaviour, and lived experience.
One explanation lies in the clown's painted face. From our very first months of life, we use facial expressions to project our emotions and, more importantly, judge other people's emotions and intentions. When we meet someone, we are reflexively and instantaneously observing eyes, mouth, and facial muscle movements, making our deductions: is this person friendly? Angry? Frightened? Playful? Dangerous?
Clown makeup disrupts this deduction process.
Wide hollow eyes, unnaturally pale skin, and a fixed smile paint an unnerving picture where we cannot rely on the signals that we are typically used to. A big smile should signal happiness and trustworthiness, and the wide eyes should signal attention. But instead, we’re recognising it all as deception and suspicious mimicry. This uncanny-valley ambiguity we’re faced with, where we see something that looks slightly-to-the-left-of human, leaves us feeling uneasy.
This isn’t just about looks though. Clowns are unmistakably human, yet their distorted appearance alongside their strange expressions and movements create an experience that conflicts with how we expect a person to look, emote, and behave.
A Move We Cannot Predict
With clowns, there is also the key component of unpredictability.
In fact, perceived unpredictability appears to be a factor to which individuals frequently attributed their fears in other specific phobias too, like spiders – a deep discomfort and tension brought on by not being able to predict the next move. Behaviour prediction, like our judgement of faces, is key in how we navigate our daily lives. It allows us to make decisions by assessing potential outcomes, anticipate danger, and makes social interaction possible.
Due to the nature of their performance, clowns disregard ordinary social rules: they invade personal space, move in strange and abrupt ways, laugh at random intervals, play tricks, and make unexpected noises. Though most of us would simply be off put by these behaviours, individuals with coulrophobia may read these behaviours, combined with their appearance, as malicious deception and immediate threat.
When we can rely on our predictions, it’s also significantly less mental load; rather than having to consciously think through if a situation might be dangerous every single time, we reflect on previous experiences to respond quickly. This may also offer an explanation as to why individuals with coulrophobia and similar fears feel overwhelmed very suddenly – exposure leading to an overstimulated nervous system working in overdrive.
A Story We Cannot Escape
Stories such as IT have undoubtedly strengthened the association between clowns and danger. Pennywise belongs to a much wider tradition of fictitious criminals, serial killers, and jokers. Repeated exposure to these portrayals in media can teach us that clown imagery signals violence, loss of security, and menace, even when we know consciously that these are only characters in stories.
Negative media portrayals are a powerful thing. I would fairly confidently bet that most of us have not been chased down by a vicious clown in real life – though 2016’s “killer clown craze” certainly increased chances of an encounter. But we all have learned a cultural fear built by decades of horror franchises, Halloween costumes, and true-crime stories wherein the clown character is a façade for something far more sinister.
This culturally inherited knowledge of clowns through media is something that I find particularly fascinating. Specifically, because there is no shortage of clown-related horror media out there. Despite the fear being as well-known as it is, there remains a clear appetite for this subgenre of horror – and horror in general. Our Editor-in-Chief, Professor Carmine Pariante spoke about exactly this phenomenon recently, in an article for The Guardian where he explained that “A horror film builds a safe enclosure where we can rehearse terror, chaos and helplessness with no adverse consequences.”. The difficult to decipher looks, jarring movements, and ambiguous (though probably malicious) intent are as unnerving as they are captivating, keeping audiences hooked while in the safety of their own homes.
My extracurricular research into clown fear has revealed one key thing: phobias do not always have a single, dramatic origin. Instead, it is a culmination of perceived threat, uncanny valley unease, the media we consume, vicarious learning, and direct personal experience. Research consistently suggests that several explanations can overlap; our minds develop fear, like anything else, through a mixture of temperament, learning, culture, and experience.
So, if an infant-me's nervous system really did flag something unreadable yet alarming in that clown’s grin and piercing laugh, then it wasn't being irrational – it was doing exactly what phobia research says it's built to do.
