Halloween. What is coulrophobia – why are we afraid of clowns

You can read about the fact that coulrophobia, or the fear of clowns, is, according to psychologists, “an extremely common phobia”, among others: in the text “Trending in science: Coulrophobia is a serious matter”, published on the European Commission website. It recalled research conducted in 2008 at the University of Sheffield, which involved 250 children aged 4 to 16. They allowed us to establish that clowns arouse “universal aversion” among both the youngest and teenagers.

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Research by scientists from the Faculty of Biological Sciences and Education and the Faculty of Psychology and Therapeutic Studies at the University of South Africa shed more light on the fear of clowns. Walespublished in 2022. Researchers looked at data collected from a group of 987 people aged 18 to 77 and determined that the fear of clowns occurs not only in children and adolescents, but also in adults.

More than half of respondents (53.5 percent) said they were at least “somewhat” afraid of clowns, while 5 percent of respondents said they were “very afraid of them.” “Interestingly, the percentage of people reporting extreme fear of clowns is slightly higher than for many other phobias, such as animal phobia (3.8%), blood/injection/injury (3%), height phobia (2.8%). percent), open water or weather phenomena (2.3 percent), closed spaces (2.2 percent) and flying (1.3 percent),” writes the ScienceAlert portal, citing research originally published in the journal ” International Journal of Mental Health”.

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Why are people afraid of clowns? Researchers have determined that one factor contributing to coulrophobia is the portrayal of clowns in a negative light in popular culture. However, the strongest factor turned out to be “hidden emotional signals”. This – according to scientists – suggests that many people's fear of clowns results from the inability to see their facial expressions.

– People are usually frightened by things that are wrong, wrong in some unknown and disturbing way – said Paul Salkovskis from the Maudsley Hospital Center for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma in London, quoted on the European Commission's website eight years ago.

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