What's so scary about clowns?

It's bizarre that a character designed to be funny is almost universally creepy.

Morning Consult did a poll and found that Americans are more scared of clowns than climate change.

Now, I don't know if that says more about clowns, climate change, or Americans,

but it at least tells you that the clown get-up isn't as funny as originally intended.

Some people say that we're scared of clowns for historical reasons.

Right? You'll hear it's because of an infamous clown serial killer in the 70s

or because of books and movies leveraging the killer clown concept in the 80s and ever since.

Some will argue it's because of likely resultant scary clown panics, where everyone is spotting killer clowns.

But then you'll get some experts who argue that we are creeped out by clowns for deeper psychological reasons.

Canadian psychologist Rami Nader argues that the ambiguity of the clown's emotions,

caused by their frozen, happy, facial expressions, unsettles people.

Humans evolve to be cautious in the face of ambiguity, right?

When there's a potential threat, it's better to be nervous and alive than

fearless and dead. And Nader's theory is that the makeup of a clown creates an ambiguous

situation, and primates like us react with appropriate caution. Now, you all know I love applying evolutionary psychology, but for what it's worth, I do favor the

historical approach here. Clowns with the exact same makeup were fun and cute looking, long before

we humans thought they were scary.

And nothing relevant about human biology has changed in the interval, so if we're looking

for reasons why we're creeped out by clown makeup, it probably isn't something inherent.

However, regardless of history, regardless of ambiguity,

one clown still looks good in that makeup.

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