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Hello, this is Dr. Grande.
Today's question is: How can one appear to be less creepy?
So, how did we get here?
Well, I had a few videos recently on how to appear less narcissistic and how to appear less needy,
and in between those videos, I received a few questions,
and one of them, as I mentioned before in the "How to Appear Less Needy" video,
was how to appear less creepy.
Of course, I didn't answer this question,
bu I had a few people comment and send me emails and say "no, that question was serious."
They really did want to know how to appear less creepy.
So, I thought, "alright, let me look and see what I can find on this topic;
I'm not really sure what I can do with the creepiness topic..."
But interestingly, I found an article published in 2016 that had a sample size of over 1300 participants
that was titled, "On the Nature of Creepiness".
Really, an excellent article looking at what it means to be creepy;
how people form these perceptions of creepiness and some other information about creepiness.
And I was able to use that to answer this question about how to appear less creepy.
I'll put the reference for that article in the description for this video.
So, if you're looking at this topic and thinking no science was involved here, no, we actually do have this paper.
And of course, I'm going to use my clinical experience to answer this question, as well.
So, what is creepiness?
Well, to understand creepiness, we first have to understand this concept of the creepiness detector. This is a real thing.
What does our creepiness detector really warn us about?
Does it warn us about physical or social harm?
Or something else?
If we think about this, if somebody was robbed,
they probably wouldn't use the word "creepy" to describe the assailant.
So it's probably not physical or social harm; there must be something else about the term "creepy".
It must really be capturing some construct that's a little different.
And if we think about it, really, creepiness is about anxiety being aroused.
It's the ambiguity of whether something is threatening or not, whether something should be feared or not feared.
It's the ambiguity about the precise nature of a threat, as well.
Is something threatening in terms of physical violence, sexual violence, contamination, or something else?
"Creepy" is really different than concepts like "disgusting" or "terrifying",
because with those concepts, the way we should react is pretty clear.
If something's terrifying, we're going to move away from it. If something's disgusting, we're going to move away from it.
But creepy leaves us in an odd place of feeling kind of unpleasant, right?
Because it would be rude or embarrassing to run away from an individual who wasn't being overtly threatening.
But also, it could be very dangerous to ignore your intuition and remain in a situation that could be dangerous.
It's really this ambivalence.
It's strong feelings in both directions
that make the feeling of creepiness uncomfortable and keep people stuck.
It doesn't feel right, but we can't say for sure what's dangerous about it.
That's really the essence of creepiness.
What we know about creepiness, at least under this theory,
is that we want to create more social distance between ourselves
and individuals who appear to display inappropriate or non-normative expressions of emotion.
That's what I'm really starting with here in this description before I move to more of the details of this study.
When we look at this particular study, they had four hypotheses,
and I think all these make sense to test as hypotheses.
The first one is: if creepiness really communicates a potential threat, then males are more likely to be perceived as creepy,
because, on average, they are more violent and physically threatening.
That doesn't mean that all males are violent and physically threatening
but on average, we see violence has a stronger association with being male,
and the threatening behaviors are more associated with being male.
That's the first hypothesis - essentially that males are more likely to appear creepy.
The second hypothesis is really kind of related to the first,
and this is that females are more likely than males to perceive some sort of sexual threat from a creepy person.
This just makes sense given the first hypothesis.
The third hypothesis is that occupations that signal a fascination with threatening stimuli
would attract individuals who would be comfortable with that type of work,
and therefore, some occupations may be perceived as creepier than other occupations.
The fourth hypothesis here is because creepiness is a function of uncertainty about threats;
that non-normative behavior and characteristics associated with unpredictability
would have a strong association with perceptions of creepiness.
They tried to test these hypotheses with certain methods, so we see a few different sections here in this paper.
The first one, they asked participants:
"Imagine a close friend of yours whose judgment you trust."
"Now imagine that this friend tells you that she or he just met someone for the first time,
"and they tell you that person is creepy."
So with this scenario in mind, participants rated the likelihood that certain behaviors or physical characteristics
would be observed in that person - the person who's described as creepy.
In the second section, they looked at occupations that could be associated with creepiness.
We see in the third section, free response items about hobbies,
and in the fourth section, they looked for the level of agreement on the nature of creepiness.
So, what did we see in this article in terms of results?
Well, 95% of the respondents thought that creepy people were much more likely to be males, as opposed to females.
This was both male and female respondents.
Both men and women thought that men would be more likely to be assessed as creepy.
We also see the certain behaviors and characteristics were more closely associated with the idea of being creepy than others.
With this first list, I'm moving from those that were kind of towards the middle
but leaned more on the side of creepy to extremely creepy
So, some of the behaviors and characteristics:
being extremely thin,
talking a lot about your personal life,
having a mental illness, and this is unfortunate because this really just plays into the stigma we already see with mental illness.
I was kind of disappointed that this was on the list, but it was what the research found, so it's important information.
We see showing little expression, little emotional expression, and interestingly
showing too much emotional expression was determined as creepy, as well
We see that if somebody is significantly older than the friend,
again, we're talking about the scenario where a friend was approached by somebody they determined to be creepy.
If somebody doesn't make eye contact, that is associated with creepiness.
Having greasy hair,
asking for personal details about the friends's family,
asking to take a picture with the friend,
steering the conversation towards sex - this one seems fairly obvious.
Touching the friend frequently,
and watching the friend before interacting - this was actually the most creepy behavior.
Watching somebody but not having any type of verbal or other interaction with them.
Those items went from, again, moderately associated tp creepiness to extremely creepy,
but how about moving the other way? Moving from kind of the moderate or a little less than average in terms of creepiness to?
Moving from kind of the moderate, or a little less than average in terms of creepiness,
to something that was not associated with creepiness hardly at all.
Well, here we see behaviors like smiling a lot,
nodding frequently,
dressing too formally for the situation,
being fashionably dressed,
and talking a lot about clothes.
This one - the talking a lot about clothes - was the least creepy behavior.
It had a negative association with creepiness.
We see that females were more likely to think that steering a conversation towards sex was a characteristic of a creepy person,
and they were more likely to think that a creepy person had a sexual interest in them.
What about occupations? Are certain occupations associated with creepiness?
It turns out that there are.
There are occupations that are associated with creepiness and some that appear to be not creepy.
So, kind of moving on the side of those that were generally considered creepy from a point of creepiness to a point of extreme creepiness:
from a point of creepiness to a point of extreme creepiness, we see:
funeral director,
sex shop owner,
taxidermist,
and the most creepy occupation of all, clown.
Moving from occupations that were maybe not very creepy to those that definitely were not creepy at all,
we see financial advisor,
physicians, college professors, farmers, teachers,
and the least creepy of all, meteorologists.
We see here, as well, that individuals are generally weary
of people that have a preoccupation with monitoring or watching the activity of others.
In general, no matter what the occupation was, this would seem to have some association with creepiness.
And this kind of makes sense, right?
If you picture somebody whose job it is to look at monitors and watch people doing various things,
that has more of an association with creepiness that somebody who's not doing that.
The theory generated from these findings is that individuals who display unusual patterns of nonverbal behavior,
odd emotional responses, or who have highly distinctive physical characteristics,
are outside of the norm and may be determined as unpredictable.
They may be assessed as unpredictable by other people, which leads to an increased perception of creepiness.
This increased level of creepiness really iIncreases vigilance,
and it makes somebody kind of work to figure out if somebody should be feared or not.
Interestingly, these results did not indicate that people that are assessed as creepy are also assessed as having ill intentions,
but rather there just maybe a worry about the potential of dangerousness.
We also see that most of the participants believe that creepy people cannot change,
and only a few participants believe that individuals who are creepy are aware that they're creepy.
This kind of points a little bit to the answer of how to appear less creepy.
If somebody's asking this question in the first place, that's probably a good sign. That's probably a good sign that they won't appear to be creepy.
So, what can we learn from all this? Can I answer this question of how to appear less creepy? Yes.
First, I want to illustrate kind of a hypothetical scenario that I think would be associated with a very high level of creepiness.
This isn't a scenario I think would happen very often, but I put this together and I think it's kind of interesting.
It kind of maybe illustrates some of the points here in these research findings.
So, somebody happens to be an extremely thin man with poor fashion sense and greasy hair,
who also owns a sex shop, but moonlights as a clown.
And this person sees a significantly younger woman and watches her without talking,
but then goes up to her, and in an emotionless way, asks her personal details without making eye contact.
And furthermore, after this, asks to take a picture while steering the conversation towards sex while touching her on the arm.
This individual is almost certainly going to be assessed by that woman as being creepy, right?
I mean, look at that scenario. That lines up pretty close with this idea of creepiness.
So, I would say in terms of answering this question, the first part would be try to avoid a scenario like that.
In terms of how to appear less creepy, well -
You can't do much about the job part.
You have the job that you have, so if you have an occupation associated with creepiness,
it would probably be a good idea not to mention that, at least not straight away.
Other things that can be done here would be dress fashionably,
make appropriate eye contact, don't ask for personal information.
Keep distance. No touching.
Never talk about sex. Instead, talk about meteorology, farming, and economics.
Don't try to take any photos. Smile, but not too much.
And in general, try to appear within the normal range for emotional expression.
So, really...
For some people, this probably comes naturally, right, with some of these elements.
But for others, there might be more of a struggle, and then I might have to kind of
look at some of their behaviors and try to move them into the less creepy zone, right?
An interesting question.
I can see how some people would ask this question and kind of be kidding about it,
and I can also see how some people would ask this question and be very serious.
Again, because of different relational styles and different levels of social skills or social awkwardness,
somebody may struggle with this in terms of perception.
Perception does matter, and I don't think it's helpful in most social situations to be perceived as creepy
So, this question does make sense.
An interesting question, certainly an unusual question,
but I hope I was able to answer in a way that would be helpful.
Whenever I talk about issues like creepiness and perceptions and all this, I know there can be lot of opinions.
On this question in particular, I think people will have strong opinions.
If you agree or disagree with me or have other opinions on this question, please put those in the comments section.
I look forward to the dialogue that this will generate.
As always, I hope you found this question on how to appear less creepy to be interesting.
Thanks for watching.