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On the Nature of Creepiness
... This combination of threat with uncertainty about the source of the threat seems to elicit a relatively specific experience of "creepiness" or uncanniness (Jentsch, 1997). For example, creepy individuals are described as being both unpredictable and potentially harmful (using statements such as "I cannot predict how he or she will behave", "I believe that he or she is intentionally hiding something from me") (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016). A similar pattern emerges in response to environments, where the potential of threat from uncertain sources can make spaces themselves feel creepy (McAndrew, 2020). ...
... To develop this virtual world, we used environmental features that have been associated with ambiguous threat in psychological research, using dark spaces (Grillon et al., 1997;Mühlberger et al., 2008) with areas where an assailant might be hiding (Nasar & Jones, 1997;Rigoli et al., 2016), limiting escape routes (Blöbaum & Hunecke, 2005;Löw et al., 2015;Nasar et al., 1993), and providing clues to the presence of a hostile agent of unknown origin (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016). ...
... To amplify ambiguous threat by providing areas where an assailant might hide (Nasar & Jones, 1997;Rigoli et al., 2016), the subsequent rooms include dark corners, shelves, boxes, and clouds of steam (e.g., dark office, storage room, flares and steam, shadow). Some rooms further provide clues that an unknown and potentially hostile agent might be present or nearby (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016) via the sound of footsteps (footsteps), scattered bones and blood stains (blood and bones), a shadow of a moving figure (shadow). The world also includes startling events (Baird, 2000), one in which a door slams abruptly (door slams) and one in which an underground train rides past (train). ...
Threatening environments can be unpredictable in many different ways. The nature of threats, their timing, and their locations in a scene can all be uncertain, even when one is acutely aware of being at risk. Prior research demonstrates that both temporal unpredictability and spatial uncertainty of threats elicit a distinctly anxious psychological response. In the paradigm presented here, we further explore other facets of ambiguous threat via an environment in which there are no concrete threats, predictable or otherwise, but which nevertheless elicits a building sense of danger. By incorporating both psychological research and principles of emotional game design, we constructed this world and then tested its effects in three studies. In line with our goals, participants experienced the environment as creepy and unpredictable. Their subjective and physiological response to the world rose and fell in line with the presentation of ambiguously threatening ambient cues. Exploratory analyses further suggest that this ambiguously threatening experience influenced memory for the virtual world and its underlying narrative. Together the data demonstrate that naturalistic virtual worlds can effectively elicit a multifaceted experience of ambiguous threat with subjective and cognitive consequences.
... McAndrew (2020) argued that certain physical places can be perceived as creepy if they trigger agent detection mechanisms sensitive to indicators of the presence of harmful entities. Similarly, McAndrew and Koehnke (2016) proposed that creepiness is generally elicited by threat ambiguity: indicators of potential danger, independent of the stimulus' category. Furthermore, absence of light may contribute to agent detection mechanisms as darkness increases the intensity of startle responses (Grillon, Pellewoski, Merikangas, & Davies, 1997;Mühlberger, Wieser, & Pauli, 2008) and enhances detection of potential threat of ethnic outgroups (Schaller, Park, & Faulkner, 2003). ...
... Fourth and fifth, if threat ambiguity underlies the uncanniness of places, threat should predict uncanniness of physical places (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;threat hypothesis). On the other hand, abnormality should predict uncanniness ratings according to the hypothesis that deviation from familiarity underlies the effect (Diel & Lewis, 2022;deviation hypothesis A). ...
... Lack of light has been associated with perceived lack of safety in past research (Boomsma & Steg, 2014). These results align with McAndrew and Koehnke's (2016) theory of threat ambiguity and with Stamps (2007) observations that lighting and occlusion increase a place's sense of mystery or lack of information. ...
Certain built environments can decrease aesthetic appeal. For humans and objects, deviation from typical appearances leads to nonlinear appraisal characterised as the uncanny valley. The first time, it was explored whether an uncanny valley can be found for built environments. In Experiment 1, a cubic N-shaped function of uncanniness plotted against realism of built environments was found, indicating an uncanny valley. Quantitative and qualitative data indicate an association between uncanniness and structural anomalies. Experiment 2 explored distortions leading to uncanniness of indoor places. In Experiment 3, human presence decreased uncanniness of distorted indoor public places but increased uncanniness of private rooms. Taken together, the evidence indicates that deviations from familiar configural patterns drive uncanniness of built physical places. Thus, strong deviations from a built environment's predictable pattern decreases its aesthetic appeal.
... Creepiness" is a commonly reported but little understood or empirically studied phenomenon. The present research sought to extend seminal work conducted by McAndrew and Koehnke (2016) and Watt et al. (2017) by examining the role of the ambiguity of threat, and attendance to eyes (vs. other facial regions) in perceptions of creepiness. ...
... Creepiness is a commonly reported but little understood or empirically examined social phenomena; however, interest seems to be gaining traction. Recent studies have examined creepiness in situations (Langer & König, 2018), physical surroundings (McAndrews, 2020), and objects (e.g., dolls and masks) and occupations (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016). Most relevant to the present investigation are two studies that have examined creepiness as it presents in individuals and is educed in social interactions. ...
... Most participants reported making judgments of creepiness instantly (72%) and most (72%) indicated that they would avoid or ignore a creepy individual. This avoidance suggests some ambiguity as to whether the creepy person is perceived as threatening or just undesirable; as McAndrew and Koehnke (2016) suggested, "we do not necessarily assume ill intentions from people who are creepy, although we may still worry that they are dangerous" (p. 16). ...
Le malaise que suscitent certaines personnes est un phénomène couramment rapporté, mais il est peu compris et a fait l’objet de peu d’études empiriques. La présente recherche visait à poursuivre le travail précurseur mené par McAndrew et Koehnke (New Ideas in Psychology, 2016, 43, 10) et par Watt et al. (Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, 2017, 49, 58), qui ont examiné le rôle de l’ambiguïté de la menace et l’attention accordée aux yeux (comparativement aux autres parties du visage) dans la survenue de ce malaise. Dans l’Étude 1, les participants (N = 254; 79 % de femmes) ont répondu à des questionnaires sur l’inconfort envers l’ambiguïté, l’intolérance à l’incertitude et la peur de l’inconnu, puis ont évalué le malaise, la fiabilité et l’attrait que suscitaient 30 images de visages. Un haut niveau d’inconfort envers l’ambiguïté (comparativement à l’intolérance à l’incertitude et à la peur de l’inconnu) prédisait le mieux l’évaluation du malaise. Dans l’Étude 2 (N = 32; 67 % de femmes), on s’est servi du monitorage oculaire pour évaluer la façon dont les observateurs examinaient les yeux et les autres parties du visage dans des images faciales d’hommes, deux glauques et deux neutres tirées de l’Étude 1. Les résultats ont révélé que les participants fixaient significativement plus longtemps les yeux (comparativement aux autres parties du visage) pour toutes les images. Les répercussions de ces résultats sont discutées pour ce qui a trait à la façon dont on évalue le risque au quotidien ainsi que pour les gens jugés glauques.
... While their study is not directly relevant to the creepiness of inanimate objects, their fndings echoed some of the qualitative evidence in HCI where creepiness is linked to violation of norms and the perceived possibility of harm. McAndrew and Koehnke [43] used an online survey to establish that unpredictability was a key factor in creepiness. This fnding is a relevant aspect for our work as the potentially creepy technologies in HCI research also contained a certain je ne sais quoi element. ...
... In such cases, the moderators explored the topic further. The adjectives were adapted from related work [35,43,52,79,81] with the help of the Oxford Thesaurus of English [78]. ...
... The term 'undesirability' highlights the feeling of unease inherent to the artefact, which can be due to a variety of factors such as social context or aesthetic appearance. This dimension is based on McAndrew and Koehnke's [43] research, adapted to the creepiness of inanimate objects. Focus group participants refected on negative social consequences of using the technologies with which they were interacting: P1: But I fnd it a bit creepy. ...
Interactive technologies are getting closer to our bodies and permeate the infrastructure of our homes. While such technologies offer many benefits, they can also cause an initial feeling of unease in users. It is important for Human-Computer Interaction to manage first impressions and avoid designing technologies that appear creepy. To that end, we developed the Perceived Creepiness of Technology Scale (PCTS), which measures how creepy a technology appears to a user in an initial encounter with a new artefact. The scale was developed based on past work on creepiness and a set of ten focus groups conducted with users from diverse backgrounds. We followed a structured process of analytically developing and validating the scale. The PCTS is designed to enable designers and researchers to quickly compare interactive technologies and ensure that they do not design technologies that produce initial feelings of creepiness in users.
... The role of facial ambiguity in social perception is congruent with recent research on creepiness and the uncanny valley. With regard to the former, some authors argue that creepiness is an unpleasant emotional response that arises from some ambiguity in a potential threat and may rely on information gathered from certain facial cues of a target person (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Watt, Maitland, & Gallagher, 2017). Creepiness may be better understood in the context of social interactions, being associated with violation of social norms and appraisals of untrustworthiness, which suggest that creepiness may be an adaptive response directed to increase vigilance during periods of social uncertainty (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016). ...
... With regard to the former, some authors argue that creepiness is an unpleasant emotional response that arises from some ambiguity in a potential threat and may rely on information gathered from certain facial cues of a target person (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Watt, Maitland, & Gallagher, 2017). Creepiness may be better understood in the context of social interactions, being associated with violation of social norms and appraisals of untrustworthiness, which suggest that creepiness may be an adaptive response directed to increase vigilance during periods of social uncertainty (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016). Indeed, the link between ambiguity and social danger is supported by evolutionary theory (Becker et al., 2011;Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008) and neuroimaging evidence, which has shown a link between social anxiety and greater activation of the amygdala in response to ambiguous stimuli (Griffin & Langlois, 2006;Thomas et al., 2001). ...
... Therefore, we wanted to ensure that our face stimuli would be perceived as uncanny in the real world. On this basis, we decided to focus on male faces given their greater propensity to elicit the creepiness response (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Watt et al., 2017). ...
We used implicit and explicit measures to study whether “real” uncanny faces (by faces of Botox users and very ugly people) will be associated with perceptions of bad moral character and social avoidance. Implicit measures showed that uncanny faces were more strongly associated with negative aesthetic evaluations (“ugliness”) than with negative moral evaluation (“moral disgust”). At the explicit level, participants preferred greater social distance from uncanny faces than from neutral faces and inferred that they shared fewer moral values with uncanny faces than with neutral faces. Contrary to our hypotheses, only Ugly faces (but not Botox faces) were perceived as more likely to commit behaviors that indicate bad moral character. However, when this analysis was restricted to “sick” immoral actions, Botox faces were perceived as more likely to be engage in these kind of behaviors than neutral faces. Although exploratory in nature, this investigation suggest that ugliness (more than creepiness) may be the crucial evaluative dimension underlying rapid moral inferences from faces.
... The role of facial ambiguity in social perception is congruent with recent research on creepiness and the uncanny valley. With regard to the former, some authors argue that creepiness is an unpleasant emotional response that arises from some ambiguity in a potential threat and may rely on information gathered from certain facial cues of a target person (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Watt, Maitland, & Gallagher, 2017). Creepiness may be better understood in the context of social interactions, being associated with violation of social norms and appraisals of untrustworthiness, which suggest that creepiness may be an adaptive response directed to increase vigilance during periods of social uncertainty (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016). ...
... With regard to the former, some authors argue that creepiness is an unpleasant emotional response that arises from some ambiguity in a potential threat and may rely on information gathered from certain facial cues of a target person (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Watt, Maitland, & Gallagher, 2017). Creepiness may be better understood in the context of social interactions, being associated with violation of social norms and appraisals of untrustworthiness, which suggest that creepiness may be an adaptive response directed to increase vigilance during periods of social uncertainty (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016). Indeed, the link between ambiguity and social danger is supported by evolutionary theory (Becker et al., 2011;Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008) and neuroimaging evidence, which has shown a link between social anxiety and greater activation of the amygdala in response to ambiguous stimuli (Griffin & Langlois, 2006;Thomas et al., 2001). ...
... Therefore, we wanted to ensure that our face stimuli would be perceived as uncanny in the real world. On this basis, we decided to focus on male faces given their greater propensity to elicit the creepiness response (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Watt et al., 2017). ...
We used implicit and explicit measures to study whether “real” uncanny faces (by faces of
Botox users and very ugly people) will be associated with perceptions of bad moral
character and social avoidance. Implicit measures showed that uncanny faces were more
strongly associated with negative aesthetic evaluations (“ugliness”) than with negative
moral evaluation (“moral disgust”). At the explicit level, participants preferred greater
social distance from uncanny faces than from neutral faces and inferred that they shared
fewer moral values with uncanny faces than with neutral faces. Contrary to our hypotheses,
only Ugly faces (but not Botox faces) were perceived as more likely to commit behaviors
that indicate bad moral character. However, when this analysis was restricted to “sick”
immoral actions, Botox faces were perceived as more likely to be engage in these kind of
behaviors than neutral faces. Although exploratory in nature, this investigation suggest that
ugliness (more than creepiness) may be the crucial evaluative dimension underlying rapid
moral inferences from faces.
... While their study is not directly relevant to the creepiness of inanimate objects, their findings echoed some of the qualitative evidence in HCI where creepiness is linked to violation of norms and the perceived possibility of harm. McAndrew and Koehnke [43] used an online survey to establish that unpredictability was a key factor in creepiness. This finding is a relevant aspect for our work as the potentially creepy technologies in HCI research also contained a certain je ne sais quoi element. ...
... In such cases, the moderators explored the topic further. The adjectives were adapted from related work [35,43,52,79,81] with the help of the Oxford Thesaurus of English [78]. ...
... The term 'undesirability' highlights the feeling of unease inherent to the artefact, which can be due to a variety of factors such as social context or aesthetic appearance. This dimension is based on McAndrew and Koehnke's [43] research, adapted to the creepiness of inanimate objects. Focus group participants reflected on negative social consequences of using the technologies with which they were interacting: P1: But I find it a bit creepy. ...
Interactive technologies are getting closer to our bodies and permeate the infrastructure of our homes. While such technologies offer many benefits, they can also cause an initial feeling of unease in users. It is important for Human-Computer Interaction to manage first impressions and avoid designing technologies that appear creepy. To that end, we developed the Perceived Creepiness of Technology Scale (PCTS), which measures how creepy a technology appears to a user in an initial encounter with a new artefact. The scale was developed based on past work on creepiness and a set of ten focus groups conducted with users from diverse backgrounds. We followed a structured process of analytically developing and validating the scale. The PCTS is designed to enable designers and researchers to quickly compare interactive technologies and ensure that they do not design technologies that produce initial feelings of creepiness in users.
... More specifically, we propose that perceptions of creepiness will be predicted by the personality trait of discomfort with ambiguity and the degree to which individuals are susceptible to having "Not Just Right Experiences" (Buse et al., 2015). McAndrew and Koehnke (2016) proposed that creepiness is a by-product of ambiguity. In the first-ever empirical study of creepiness, an online survey of 1,341 people, participants rated the likelihood that creepy people would exhibit 44 different behaviors, the creepiness of various occupations and hobbies, and expressed their degree of agreement with 15 statements about the nature of creepy individuals. ...
... Our study did indeed find that being intolerant of ambiguity or being susceptible to having not just right experiences were predictors of being easily confused and creeped out by confusing or creepy images and also predicted the time spent looking at them. This is consistent with theories positing ambiguity as the driving force behind the experience of creepiness (i.e., Doyle et al., 2022;McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Smith, 2016). Our results also extend the finding of Doyle et al. (2022) that discomfort with ambiguity is a predictor of getting creeped out by creepy people; we have demonstrated that it is also relevant to our emotional reactions to creepy places, creepy things, and images that are confusing and difficult to make sense of. ...
This study was designed to explore the role played by ambiguity in the experience of creepiness, as well as the relevance of personality traits for predicting individual differences in susceptibility to getting “creeped out,” In an online study, a mixed sample of 278 college undergraduates and adults (60 males, 206 females, 12 nonbinary or chose not to report; Mean age = 31.43, range 18-68) recruited through social network platforms filled out scales measuring their tolerance for ambiguity and their susceptibility to having “Not Just Right Experiences.” They then rated 25 images (12 normal, 13 prejudged to be creepy or confusing) on creepiness and several other adjective dimensions. The findings indicated that individuals who were less tol- erant of ambiguity and those highly susceptible to not just right experiences perceived ambiguous or creepy persons, places, and objects to be more creepy, confusing and disturbing. Both measures were negatively related to time spent looking at confusing or creepy images, and females were generally more easily creeped out by creepy and confusing images than were males. The results support the conclusion that current models of creepiness are correct; the emotional experience of getting “creeped out” does indeed appear to be triggered by the need to resolve ambiguity.
... Since affective technologies challenge existing cognitive schemes and elicit a feeling of uncertainty (Freude et al. 2019), they evoke emotional creepiness among users. This is in line with psychological research which suggests that unpredictability activates a sense of creepiness (McAndrew and Koehnke 2016). ...
... Particularly, I supplement the personalization-privacy trade-off by including the factors perceived emotional support and emotional creepiness. So far, those factors have been investigated mostly in the context of human-human interaction (House 1981;McAndrew and Koehnke 2016). However, since affective technologies possess emotional intelligence, they can fulfill emotional requirements by capturing and analyzing human emotions (Huang and Rust 2018). ...
By leveraging recent advancements in affective computing, emotion-based personalization systems provide media offerings tailored to users' emotions. Although emotionally intelligent systems increasingly attract attention both in research and in practice, research on users' perceptions of emotion-based personalization is sparse. Building on the personalization-privacy trade-off, I propose a comprehensive framework to investigate how the use of affective technologies for personalization impacts users' trust mediated by their perceived benefits and threats. To test the research model, I conduct an experiment with a fictitious music personalization system and analyze the results using partial least squares structural equation modeling. The results show that emotion-based personalization positively impacts users' trust via perceived emotional support but simultaneously hampers trust via privacy concerns and emotional creepiness.
... A sense of creepiness, then, may be an adaptive response that increases vigilance towards a socially dangerous target (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Watt et al., 2017). Similarly, research on the "uncanny valley" suggests that deviant facial expressions signal social ambiguity and psychopathic traits (Olivera-La Rosa, 2018;Tinwell et al., 2013). ...
... Secondly, based on previous studies suggesting that the emotional response of creepiness (the "uncanny feeling") is triggered by deviant facial expressions signaling social uncertainty and appraisals of psychopathic traits (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Tinwell et al., 2013), we predicted (H2) that affective deviants would be rated as "creepier" than normative targets. Our results supported this hypothesis. ...
We assessed negative bias in Colombian young offenders towards affective deviants (those who violate emotional norms). Postulating that affective deviants elicit an “uncanny/creepy” feeling resembling that produced by psychopaths, we explored social judgments of affective deviants in individuals with callous-unemotional (CU) traits. 188 young offenders evaluated a target displaying congruent or incongruent affective displays in response to pictures eliciting positive/negative affect, depending on the condition. Affective deviants were rated as creepier and less trustworthy, and more likely to have bad moral character, than targets who displayed normative affect. Further, affective deviants who displayed positive affect in response to negative stimuli were rated as having worse moral character than those who displayed negative affect in response to positive stimuli. CU traits predicted lower trustworthiness judgments of targets in congruent conditions, but higher trustworthiness judgments of targets in incongruent conditions. CU traits also predicted higher desired social distance and creepiness judgments in congruent conditions. Creepiness ratings correlated with judgments of bad moral character, suggesting that this emotional response may be involved in moral evaluations of strangers. These findings indicate that deviant affective displays produce a variety of negative social judgments, with CU traits playing a role in these social cognitive heuristics.
... Objects, situations, and events that do not fit our everyday understanding of the world are often described as eerie, creepy, or uncanny. These ascriptions can be made regarding new technologies (Langer & König, 2018), unusual human behavior (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016), or peculiar coincidences (Freud, 1919(Freud, /2003. Negative evaluations can hinder the adoption of supportive products like healthcare robots (Olaronke, Ojerinde, & Ikono, 2017) or service chatbots (Ciechanowski, Przegalińska, Magnuski, & Gloor, 2019). ...
... Moosa & Ud-Dean, 2010;Palomäki et al.,2018;Rosenthal et al., 2014). The entities could also appear threatening because of their ambiguity(McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016). ...
The uncanny valley (UV) effect is a negative affective reaction to human-looking artificial entities. It hinders comfortable, trust-based interactions with android robots and virtual characters. Despite extensive research, a consensus has not formed on its theoretical basis or methodologies. We conducted a meta-analysis to assess operationalizations of human likeness (independent variable) and the UV effect (dependent variable). Of 468 studies, 72 met the inclusion criteria. The studies employed 10 different stimulus creation techniques, 39 affect measures, and 14 indirect measures. Based on 247 effect sizes, a three-level meta-analysis model revealed the UV effect had a large effect size, Hedges' g = 1.01 [0.80, 1.22]. A mixed-effects meta-regression model with creation technique as the moderator variable revealed face distortion produced the largest effect size, g = 1.46 [0.69, 2.24], followed by distinct entities, g = 1.20 [1.02, 1.38], realism render, g = 0.99 [0.62, 1.36], and morphing, g = 0.94 [0.64, 1.24]. Affective indices producing the largest effects were threatening, likable, aesthetics, familiarity, and eeriness, and indirect measures were dislike frequency, categorization reaction time, like frequency, avoidance, and viewing duration. This meta-analysis-the first on the UV effect-provides a methodological foundation and design principles for future research.
... Tene and Polonetsky [102] note that creepiness is "highly subjective and difcult to generalize," but specify that it may be a response to behavior that "leans in" against traditional social norms. Research in social psychology investigating creepiness in human encounters [53] suggests that feeling "creeped out" is "an emotional response to ambiguity about the presence of threat" [60]. In HCI, creepiness has been defned as "an emotional response to a sense of wrongness that is difcult to clearly articulate" [91]. ...
... [91]); (ii) ambiguity of the threat (e.g. [51,60]) resulting from boundary violation; and (iii) user control over privacy (e.g. [110,114]). ...
... This is consistent with previous research on creepiness, an aversive response to faces and other stimuli perceived as having suspicious or ambiguous motives (Watt et al., 2017). Specifically, men are more often perceived as creepy than women (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016), perhaps because they tend to be physically larger and stronger than women and more capable of posing a physical threat to others (Watt et al., 2017). ...
Les filtres photo sont devenus une stratégie omniprésente pour obtenir l’approbation dans les médias sociaux et les applications de rencontre. Postulant que la sociosexualité est un prédicteur majeur des réactions aux photos dans les applications, nous avons examiné si les différences individuelles dans la sociosexualité non restreinte façonnent les perceptions des visages manipulés à l’aide de filtres photo. Nous avons mené une étude en ligne (n = 218, 145 femmes; âge moyen = 25,43 ans, écart-type = 8,72) auprès d’un échantillon colombien afin d’évaluer si des filtres photo exagérés et subtils appliqués à des visages (plus ou moins attrayants) influençaient les jugements de fiabilité et le comportement d’appréciation dans une interface mobile de type rencontre basée sur l’image. Les données ont été analysées à l’aide de modèles linéaires à effets mixtes dans R. Nos résultats ont montré que la sociosexualité sans restriction (a) prédisait des jugements plus élevés de la fiabilité perçue basée sur le visage; (b) diminuait l’appréciation des visages non attrayants; et (c) augmentait l’appréciation des visages avec un filtre photo subtil et sans filtre, mais diminuait l’appréciation des visages auxquels un filtre photo exagéré avait été appliqué. En outre, nous avons constaté que (d) par rapport aux visages sans filtre, les filtres photo subtils augmentaient les réponses d’appréciation et (e) les visages non attrayants étaient jugés moins fiables et moins appréciés que les visages neutres et attrayants. Le constat voulant que la sociosexualité façonne les jugements de fiabilité perçue basée sur le visage dans une interface de type application nous permet d’identifier une prédisposition psychologique à la fiabilité qui peut constituer un facteur de risque dans les contextes en ligne.
... As research shows, online users tend to perceive the covert collection of data and inference of characteristics as an unacceptable flow of information (Kim et al., 2019). Related to this, personalized ads might also elicit negative emotional reactions, such as feelings of creepiness which arise from the uncertainty of danger (e.g. to one's privacy) being present (De Keyzer et al., 2022;McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Segijn & van Ooijen, 2022). In the context of election campaigns, the use of personal data also elicits what can be described as moral panic (Bodó et al., 2017). ...
This paper investigates how the acceptance of data-driven political campaigning depends on four different message characteristics. A vignette study was conducted in 25 countries with a total of 14,390 respondents who all evaluated multiple descriptions of political advertisements. Relying on multi-level models, we find that in particular the source and the issue of the message matters. Messages that are sent by a party the respondent likes and deal with a political issue the respondent considers important are rated more acceptable. Furthermore, targeting based on general characteristics instead of individual ones is considered more acceptable, as is a general call to participate in the upcoming elections instead of a specific call to vote for a certain party. Effects differ across regulatory contexts, with the negative impact of both individual targeting and a specific call to vote for a certain party being in countries that have higher levels of legislative regulation.
... In Theory of Creepy, Tene and Polonetsky looked at the disconnect between technical capability and social values, finding that a technology is considered creepy when it violates an existing norm [124]. This finding has been supported by later studies looking at practices like whispering to voice assistants [89], unpredictable features [137], ambiguity in expected behavior [66,73,78], measuring creepiness [136], and a lack of transparency [122]. ...
Internet companies routinely follow users around the web, building profiles for ad targeting based on inferred attributes. Prior work has shown that these practices, generally, are creepy—but what does that mean? To help answer this question, we substantially revised an open-source browser extension built to observe a user's browsing behavior and present them with a tracker's perspective of that behavior. Our updated extension models possible interest inferences far more accurately, integrates data scraped from the user's Google ad dashboard, and summarizes ads the user was shown. Most critically, it introduces ten novel visualizations that show implications of the collected data, both the mundane (e.g., total number of ads you've been served) and the provocative (e.g., your interest in reproductive health, a potentially sensitive topic). We use our extension as a design probe in a week-long field study with 200 participants. We find that users do perceive online tracking as creepy—but that the meaning of creepiness is far from universal. Participants felt differently about creepiness even when their data presented similar visualizations, and even when responding to the most potentially provocative visualizations—in no case did more than 66% of participants agree that any one visualization was creepy.
... (Yip et al., 2019). In psychology, unpredictability has also shown to be a relevant predictor of creepiness (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016). As such, we hypothesise that participants' increased perception of the creepiness of advice written using a skeptical style can be explained by their lack of expectation that such advice would be provided skeptically. ...
When searching and browsing the web, more and more of the information we encounter is generated or mediated through large language models (LLMs). This can be looking for a recipe, getting help on an essay, or looking for relationship advice. Yet, there is limited understanding of how individuals perceive advice provided by these LLMs. In this paper, we explore people's perception of LLM-generated advice, and what role diverse user characteristics (i.e., personality and technology readiness) play in shaping their perception. Further, as LLM-generated advice can be difficult to distinguish from human advice, we assess the perceived creepiness of such advice. To investigate this, we run an exploratory study (N = 91), where participants rate advice in different styles (generated by GPT-3.5 Turbo). Notably, our findings suggest that individuals who identify as more agreeable tend to like the advice more and find it more useful. Further, individuals with higher technological insecurity are more likely to follow and find the advice more useful, and deem it more likely that a friend could have given the advice. Lastly, we see that advice given in a ‘skeptical’ style was rated most unpredictable, and advice given in a ‘whimsical’ style was rated least malicious—indicating that LLM advice styles influence user perceptions. Our results also provide an overview of people's considerations on likelihood, receptiveness, and what advice they are likely to seek from these digital assistants. Based on our results, we provide design takeaways for LLM-generated advice and outline future research directions to further inform the design of LLM-generated advice for support applications targeting people with diverse expectations and needs.
... This negative bias has been explained as due to unattractive faces being perceived as more ambiguous and, as a consequence, harder to categorize (Griffin & Langlois, 2006). Appraisals of unpredictability and ambiguous social threats are associated with the creepiness response (i.e., an unpleasant and confusing psychological reaction), which is mainly triggered by facial cues (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Watt et al., 2017). According to these authors, ambiguity in social information derived from the face is involved in this negative response. ...
Postulating a negative bias towards social ambiguity, we conducted cross-cultural online research to assess whether categorical discrepancies in the perception of androgynous faces were associated with the uncanny feeling and inferences of different morality. Across four studies, we found that androgynous faces were harder to classify into a binary sex category than sex-typical faces, but this difficulty did not influence social judgements of androgynous targets in a negative fashion. In Study 1 (Spanish-speaking sample, N = 76), we found that androgynous faces were rated as more trustworthy, less creepy, and less morally different than sex-typical faces. Study 2 replicated most of the findings from Study 1 in an Italian sample (N = 45). Positive bias towards androgyny was not replicated with a different set of stimuli featuring faces of diverse ethnic backgrounds (Study 3, Spanish-speaking sample, N = 140). However, results revealed a main effect of ethnicity in participants’ responses. When controlling for the effect of morphing procedures in stimuli selection, an overall positive bias towards androgynous targets arose, especially when compared to masculine targets (Study 4, Spanish-speaking sample, N = 85). These findings suggest that, at least in certain conditions, a positive social bias towards androgynous faces may emerge that does not depend on categorical uncertainty and facial attractiveness.
... Francis McAndrew and Sara Koehnke argue that a defensive "creepiness detector" is engaged in response to the strangeness of unsafe places. 30 For them, a sense of the creepy is a type of anxiety aroused by the ambiguity of whether or not there is something real to fear in a given situation, and the nature of that threat. The author found this unease and anxiety to be a valuable factor in the creative process, possibly through invoking additional observational as well as instinctive alertness. ...
South Africa is said to have the worst social inequality in the world, and examples of this inequality can be seen in the shack settlements, backyard shacks and hijacked properties in many parts of the city of Johannesburg. These unsafe and neglected ‘interstitial places’ are where the poor live in inadequate housing, squeezed between factory buildings, railway lines and motorways in the city. One of the challenges of capturing visual information about these settlements in these difficult settings is getting access to the areas where photographs can be taken. In Johannesburg, many areas are no longer safe for outsiders to visit. These unsafe, informal and often well-hidden areas can be considered ‘interstitial’ in relation to other areas where middle-income earners live in decent houses in pleasant suburbs with amenities. It is these ‘unsafe’ areas that the author wished to explore as a source of images and impressions for creative works. This study takes an autoethnographic approach to exploring three neglected suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa (Cleveland, Denver and Jeppestown), which all date from soon after the first discovery of gold in 1886. Through this work, the author hoped to make sense of observed changes within the city and the proliferation of informal, survivalist settlements seemingly arising without town planning interventions. Many open areas and dilapidated buildings are now occupied by low-income earners, perhaps because city governance has been overwhelmed by the thousands of work-seeking migrants arriving in the city on an ongoing basis. To explore the many visual indicators of poverty in these selected areas of Johannesburg, the author used Google Earth remote sensing images and Google Earth Street View to augment site visits. Google Earth is a valuable research tool, as one can quickly explore marginal areas that are not safe for outsiders to visit. One can also view activities that are not visible from the street – for example, illegal motor repair operations occurring behind high walls. Ethical issuesabound in these acts of anonymous looking at the poor and destitute and finding the picturesque in neglected buildings, dismal living conditions and slums, as well as the privacy and surveillance issues relating to those being observed. This essay will dwell on some of the benefits of the Google Earth virtual globe software, as well as the ethical discomfort that can result when observing people, poverty and informal living places – whether using remote sensing methods and driving around these areas with a camera, or using the images and perceptions gained for personal use as a source of inspiration for art making and fiction writing.
... 10). A common trigger of creepiness in social contexts is the masked, disguised, or opaque nature of another person (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Park, 2018;Watt et al., 2017). In such cases, it is difficult to grasp that person's state of mind and intentions and this feeling of the unknown causes perceptions of creepiness (Phillips, 2020;Watt et al., 2017). ...
Smart home assistants (SHAs) have gained a foothold in many households. Although SHAs have many beneficial capabilities, they also have characteristics that are colloquially described as creepy-a fact that may deter potential users from adopting and utilizing them. Previous research has examined SHAs neither from the perspective of resistance nor the perspective of creepiness. The present research addresses this gap and adopts a multi-method research design with four sequential studies. Study 1 serves as a pre-study and provides initial exploratory insights into the concept of creepiness in the context of SHAs. Study 2 focuses on developing a measurement instrument to assess perceived creepiness. Study 3 uses an online experiment to test the nomological validity of the construct of creepiness in a larger conceptual model. Study 4 further elucidates the underlying behavioral dynamics using focus group analysis. The findings contribute to the literature on the dark side of smart technology by analyzing the triggers and mechanisms underlying perceived creepiness as a novel inhibitor to SHAs. In addition, this study provides actionable design recommendations that allow practitioners to mitigate end users' potential perceptions of creepiness associated with SHAs and similar smart technologies.
... In these respects, clinicians might frame the onset and contents of Alicia's story in terms of "bereavement hallucinations" (Castelnovo et al., 2015) or perhaps as sporadic interactions with an actual neighbourhood girl who exhibited socially awkward or "creepy" behaviour (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016). However, accounts that reference subjective (S) and objective (O) anomalies like sensed presences, apparitions, electrical disturbances, and object movements hint that parapsychological elements might also be involved. ...
... The frst HCI work on the phenomenon of creepy user experiences is now ten years old [73]. Following the publication of this work, a subset of computing researchers interested in creepiness began to coalesce [61], with the subsequent expansion of creepiness research into the felds of psychology and legal studies (e.g., [15,30,35,38,77]). In recent years, several major studies about creepiness have been published by the HCI community (e.g., [58,82,84]). ...
... Applied to the present context, "Houses that send signals of being haunted give us the creeps not because they pose a clear threat to us, but rather because it is unclear whether or not they represent a threat (McAndrew, 2020, para 39, emphasis original). It is this ambivalence which leaves one "frozen in place, wallowing in unease" (McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;p. 11). ...
Fieldwork studies of "haunted houses" can offer ecologically valid insights for model-building or theory-formation in consciousness studies from parapsychological and conventional perspectives. The interactionist hypothesis asserts that these anomalous episodes are a phenomenon rooted in environment-person bidirectional influences. Although prior research has examined the role of various physical factors in some haunt cases, relatively recent findings in environmental psychology suggest the potential involvement of six "Gestalt influences" that transcend discrete variables as conscious-or unconscious-stimulants of witness experiences. These meta-patterns in the psychology of spaces or settings involve: (i) affordance, (ii) atmosphere, (iii) ambiguity and threat anticipatory processes, (iv) immersion and presence, (v) legibility, and (vi) percipient memory and associations. Thus, haunted houses might be variants of "enchanted spaces or extraordinary architectural experiences." New research designs are thus recommended to scrutinise the presence and impact of Gestalt influences and enactive processes in parapsychological contexts.
... After all, the search for the meaning of life is a religious one (religions being emotional quests as well as hypotheses about the purpose of life etc.). 14 So individual differences in attitude here are not surprising -compare 12 Again, this is consistent with Harman's (2008) description of his frustration at not being able to see the real hotel, described in §3. 13 Feelings of creepiness or eeriness elicited by humans and humanoid robots (the 'uncanny valley' effect) have also been explained by category ambiguities, among other factors (Chattopadhyay & MacDorman, 2016;McAndrew & Koehnke, 2016;Wang & Rochat, 2016). Such feelings also correlate with personality traits such as Neuroticism (MacDorman & Entezari, 2015). ...
What is it that appears to us: an objective reality or a subjective illusion? A brief history of the continental philosophical approach to this question is given, followed by an introduction to the recent continental movement toward Realism, which accepts there must be mind-independent entities of some kind. Yet if such an objective reality exists this raises the problem of how we can possibly conceptualise what exists and happens there, since by definition it is beyond our concepts — or at least beyond our current ones. Hence it seems mysterious, weird and wonderful. I illustrate how the arts and sciences have independently approached this question, and suggest some commonalities in their conclusions. Finally, I discuss the importance of individual differences in how we perceive and think.
Creepiness is a commonly experienced but little understood construct. The present study examined the impact of target facial image gender and orientation on perceptions of creepiness, and whether perceptions varied by participant sex and discomfort with ambiguity (DAS). Participants [ n = 137, 68.6% female; M age = 23.71 (9.73) years] rated the creepiness, trustworthiness, and attractiveness of 44 target images – 11 male and 11 female images, in each of two conditions: upright and downward tilted head or “Kubrick stare”. After controlling for participant age, results did not vary significantly by participant sex or DAS level (high vs. low). As predicted, creepiness ratings were significantly higher in the Kubrick stare (vs. upright) condition and for male (vs. female) faces with the magnitude of difference significantly higher for male (vs. female) faces in the Kubrick stare (vs. upright) condition; η ² = .46 [lower limit = .35 and upper limit = .54] vs. η ² = .32 [lower limit = .21 and upper limit = .41], respectively. There was no association between creepiness and trustworthiness in either condition. Results extend our understanding of how we perceive creepiness and the importance of face orientation in social processing.
The Uncanny Valley, hypothesized by Masahiro Mori in 1970, theorizes about a sensation of discomfort evoked in humans on exposure to anthropomorphic artificial bodies that preserve some mechanical features. The aims of this paper are multiple. Firstly, to confirm the truth of this hypothesis, which has often been the subject of controversy but which has been amply demonstrated in experimental settings and anecdotic evidence. Secondly, to focus the study of the Uncanny Valley on the face, considered as central in the manifestation of the phenomenon. Thirdly, to provide a description of this occurrence as not exclusively a neuroscientific or psychological matter, but also as an issue of extreme semiotic relevance, through the meta-analysis of recent experiments and the treatment of some cinematographic cases known to have generated the Uncanny Valley experience in the audience.
İnsansı robotların (humanoids) gelecekte toplum içerisinde pek çok alanda kullanılacağı öngörülmektedir. Bu sebeple kitlelerin humanoidlere ilişkin algılarına-tutumlarına yönelik çalışmaların yapılması kilit bir noktada durmaktadır. Nitekim bireyler bu robotlara yönelik pozitif veya negatif algılar-tutumlar geliştirebilmekte, hatta korku gibi hislere kapılabilmektedir. Masahiro Mori, bazı robotların insansı nitelikler taşımalarının ancak tümüyle insan özellikleri sergilememelerinin bireylerde korku, ürkme gibi olumsuz hisler uyandırmasını “tekinsiz vadi” terimiyle açıklamaktadır. Bu çalışmada da insansı robotlara yönelik negatif algının-tutumun ve söz konusu algının-tutumun bir parçası olarak görülebilecek “tekinsiz vadi” etkisinin kitleler arasında yaygınlığına yönelik bulgular elde etmek amaçlanmıştır. Barış Özcan isimli YouTube kanalındaki “Dans eden bu robotlar GERÇEK Mİ?” başlıklı videonun/gönderinin kullanıcı yorumları örneklem olarak belirlenmiş, yorumlar ‘doküman analizi’ ekseninde MAXQDA aracı kullanılarak toplanmış, belirli kriterler ekseninde daraltılmış ve 1443 tanesi içerik analizine tabi tutulmuştur. Yorumlar negatif, pozitif, nötr ve ilgisiz kategorilerinde kodlanarak niceliksel sıklıkları belirlenmiştir. Nihayetinde insansı robotlara yönelik negatif yorumların ağırlıkta olduğu ve negatif yorumların kayda değer bir kısmının bu çalışmada “tekinsiz vadi” etkisinin yansıması olarak kabul edilen korkmak, ürkmek gibi fiilleri veya bu fiillerden türetilen sıfatları taşıdığı saptanmıştır.
In two studies, this paper examines how perceived personalization in advertisements on social media affects brand engagement and ad avoidance. Using a preregistered between‐subjects cross‐sectional survey (n = 794), we tested four different moderated mediation models with perceived creepiness and perceived relevance as competing mediating variables, and hedonic and eudaimonic well‐being as moderating variables. Perceived relevance explains the positive effect of perceived personalization on brand engagement and the negative effect on ad avoidance. Moreover, perceived creepiness explains the negative effect of perceived personalization on ad avoidance. Contrary to our hypotheses, we find positive effects of perceived personalization via perceived creepiness on brand engagement and ad avoidance. Then, a qualitative think‐aloud survey (n = 36) shows that participants are accustomed to personalized advertisements and scroll to avoid them unless there is relevant or useful content. Independent of their well‐being, participants are not creeped out because of personalized advertising; however, it does raise their privacy concerns. Finally, the findings of our two studies indicate that advertisers and social media need to particularly consider consumers' negative affective well‐being to effectively deliver personalized advertisements due to the increase in creepiness and/or privacy concerns.
Purpose
This research proposes and examines a theoretical model grounded in anthropomorphism theory considering the curvilinear and linear relationships between service robot anthropomorphism and consumer usage intention and explores the mediating effect of perceived risk.
Design/methodology/approach
To examine the developed model, two complementary studies are designed. In Study 1, multi-time data of 511 participants show that service robot anthropomorphism inverts U-shaped (curvilinear) relationship on consumer usage intention and perceived risk mediates this curvilinear relationship. In Study 2, multi-source data of 460 volunteers are used to confirm the findings of Study 1 and examine that consumer empathy moderates the complex nonlinear effect of service robot anthropomorphism on perceived risk, and the indirect curvilinear effect of service robot anthropomorphism on consumer usage intention through perceived risk.
Findings
This research provides preliminary and yet important findings on how service robot anthropomorphism most likely is positively associated with consumer usage intention, i.e. the positively influence mechanism of service robot anthropomorphism on consumer usage intention.
Originality/value
This research provides preliminary and yet important findings on how service robot anthropomorphism most likely is positively associated with consumer usage intention, i.e. the positively influence mechanism of service robot anthropomorphism on consumer usage intention.
To feel nervously and apprehensively “creeped out” is a familiar emotional state, but its cause—what makes something or someone “creepy”—is poorly understood. A recent evolutionary account of creepiness suggests that the emotion arises from a perceived “ambiguity about the presence of threat” (McAndrew and Koehnke 10). However, not all ambiguous threats are perceived as creepy. This article argues that specifically creepy threats arise from disrupted mentalization, by which is meant difficulties in apprehending the mind of another being in such a way as to make that being seem threateningly unpredictable. The authors propose that this explanation of creepiness also explains “the uncanny,” a concept that is closely related to creepiness and to which a much older and larger research literature attaches. Finally, it is suggested that the present account can make sense of some iconically creepy figures of horror fictions, including zombies, ghosts, and ominously unhuman children.
Collectively, IT (2017) and IT: Chapter 2 (2019) earned approximately 114 million (an impressive 925% return on investment), making the duology touchstones for horror cinema in the modern era. Relatively few have focused on the industrial imperatives underwriting both films. Where some see the first film as an effective (if crass) cash-in of 1980s nostalgia, others see both films as expertly marketed, and still others claim they are simply well-made movies. A separate set of analyses have focused on the appeal of the evil clown archetype and its recent popular cultural ascent. Here, one group of writers have linked the rise in clown-related terror to the current state of political affairs—one characterized by demagogic buffoonery, chaotic and unpredictable governing, and purposeless malice. Regardless of one’s take on the films, it can be argued they serve as compelling artifacts that reveal not only the cultural fears and anxieties associated with the Trump era but also the workings of the motion picture industry and human psychology. To sort out this interpretative morass, this chapter draws from an ‘integrated analytical framework’ developed and applied by Mathias Clasen and Todd Platts to the study of slasher films. The framework pays attention to the sociocultural context that a film or set of films may reflect, the film-industrial factors that make certain films attractive from a production point of view, and the (evolved) psychological dispositions brought into play by specific films.
In Chap. 3 we saw that clowns are still relevant and have a role to play in the modern era. However, it must be recognised that clowns are not universally perceived as benign, charming entertainers. The fear of clowns is a real phenomenon, which will need to be overcome if clowning principles are to be more widely applied in practices outside of the circus and entertainment arena. The purpose of this chapter is to recognise some of the barriers which are often erected whenever it is suggested that clowning principles are applied in professional environments. For some, clowning is not taken seriously and in fairness, this is a self-created issue, which clowns would not particularly want to eliminate. However, for others, resistance is in the form of a general, undefined distrust and dislike of clowns. This chapter will explore some of the origins of the ‘scary clowns’ and look at examples of negative portrayals of clowns and try to understand how this phenomenon is perpetuated and how it might be addressed.
Purpose
With the upgrade of natural language interaction technology, the simulation extension of intelligent voice assistants (IVAs) and the uncertainty of products and services have received more and more attention. However, most of the existing research focuses on investigating the application of theories to explain consumer behavior related to intention to use and adopt IVAs, while ignoring the impact of its privacy issues on consumer resistance. This article especially examines the negative impact of artificial intelligence-based IVAs’ privacy concerns on consumer resistance, and studies the mediating effect of perceived creepiness in the context of privacy cynicism and privacy paradox and the moderating effect of anthropomorphized roles of IVAs and perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) of IVAs’ companies. The demographic variables are also included.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the theory of human–computer interaction (HCI), this study addresses the consumer privacy concerns of IVAs, builds a model of the influence mechanism on consumer resistance, and then verifies the mediating effect of perceived creepiness and the moderating effect of anthropomorphized roles of IVAs and perceived CSR of IVAs companies. This research explores underlying mechanism with three experiments.
Findings
It turns out that consumers’ privacy concerns are related to their resistance to IVAs through perceived creepiness. The servant (vs. partner) anthropomorphized role of IVAs is likely to induce more privacy concerns and in turn higher resistance. At the same time, when the company’s CSR is perceived high, the impact of the concerns of IVAs’ privacy issues on consumer resistance will be weakened, and the intermediary mechanism of perceiving creepiness in HCI and anthropomorphism of new technology are further explained and verified. The differences between different age and gender are also revealed in the study.
Originality/value
The research conclusions have strategic reference significance for enterprises to build the design framework of IVAs and formulate the response strategy of IVAs’ privacy concerns. And it offers implications for researchers and closes the research gap of IVAs from the perspective of innovation resistance.
Eye-tracking is in our future. Across many fields, eye-tracking is growing in prominence. This paper focuses on eye-tracking in virtual reality as a case study to illuminate novel privacy risks and propose a governance response to them: a design shift that provides users with an experientially resonant means of understanding privacy threats. It is a strategy that Ryan Calo calls “visceral notice.” To make our case for visceral notice, we proceed as follows. First, we provide a concise account of how eye-tracking works, emphasizing its threat to autonomy and privacy. Second, we discuss the sensitive personal information that eye-tracking reveals, complications that limit what eye-tracking studies establish, and the comparative advantage large technology companies may have when tracking our eyes. Third, we explain why eye-tracking will likely be crucial for developing virtual reality technology. Fourth, we review Calo’s conception of visceral notice and offer suggestions for applying it to virtual reality to help users better appreciate eye-tracking risks. Finally, we consider seven objections to our proposals and provide counterpoints to them.
Introduction
Fear of clowns or coulrophobia is a little understood phenomenon despite studies indicating that it has a high prevalence in the general population. There have been no previous investigations into the aetiology of this fear, although several plausible hypotheses from the wider literature can be generated; the fear stems from media portrayals of scary clowns, from the unusual physical appearance or the unpredictable behaviour displayed, or it derives from an unpleasant personal experience.
Methods
The current study reviews the literature in this area and also pilots a new questionnaire (Origin of Fear of Clowns Questionnaire; OFCQ) to explore the causes of the fear of clowns in a sample of 528 participants who reported such a fear.
Results
Our findings suggest that uncertainty of harmful intent, media influences and unpredictability of behaviour play an important role in the origins of coulrophobia. There are also multiple features of clown appearance which produce a negative experiential state and a sense of a direct threat.
Discussion
We conclude that the origins of clown fear are multi-factorial and primarily relate to aspects of their facial appearance, their behaviour, and how they have been portrayed in the media. Surprisingly, fear derived from personal experience was not one of our main findings. Further research is focused on looking at associations between the level of fear and each aetiological category.
Fear is a universal concept; people crave it in urban legends, scary movies, and modern stories. Open questions remain, however, about why these stories are scary and more generally what scares people. In this study, we explore these questions by analyzing tens of thousands of scary stories on forums (known as subreddits) in a social media website, Reddit. We first explore how writing styles have evolved to keep these stories fresh before we analyze the stable core techniques writers use to make stories scary. We find that writers have changed the themes of their stories over years from haunted houses to school-related themes, body horror, and diseases. Yet some features remain stable; words associated with pseudo-human nouns, such as clown or devil are more common in scary stories than baselines. In addition, we collect a range of datasets that annotate sentences containing fear. We use these data to develop a high-accuracy fear detection neural network model, which is used to quantify where people express fear in scary stories. We find that sentences describing fear, and words most often seen in scary stories, spike at particular points in a story, possibly as a way to keep the readers on the edge of their seats until the story's conclusion. These results provide a new understanding of how authors cater to their readers, and how fear may manifest in stories.
This chapter proposes a Husserlian phenomenological approach to the uncanny, to make some first steps toward a taxonomy of uncanny objects. Making use of the insights of Husserl, Steinbock and Tymieniecka, it proceeds according to the principle that description ought to precede theory. Thus, against a premature theoretical explanation of uncanniness, it concentrates on some objective characteristics of objects that contribute to the experience of the uncanny, arguing that the notions of home-world, alien-world, internal and external noematic horizons of objects are useful in explicating what makes an uncanny object “uncanny”. Broader in scope than some other treatments, this chapter includes discussion not only of phenomena that may be classified as negatively uncanny but also phenomena that are positively and neutrally uncanny. The result is a nine-part taxonomy which is applied in the interpretation of representative (but variegated) examples of complex uncanny objects.KeywordsThe uncannyThe creepy
Mysterium tremendum et fascinans
Husserlian phenomenologyHome-worldAlien-worldTypificationTaxonomySteinbockTymieniecka
In this article we examine the construction and circulation of images of a purportedly haunted house in Singapore’s folklore, Istana Woodneuk, through Instagram. Analyzing a corpus of 960 Instagram images, we first identify 14 tropes and then two overarching themes – haunted-place making and subversive imaging. We make three main points in this article. Firstly, we argue that the creation of Istana Woodneuk Instagram posts can be understood only against the backdrop of national anxieties about the constraint and control of land and history. Secondly, and relatedly, we posit that the bottom-up creation and collective sharing of these posts is an assertion of young Singaporean identity against a larger state narrative. Istana Woodneuk, in its ambiguity and hauntedness, along with Instagram’s affordances, gives young Singaporeans a unique unregulated space for escape from “reality” and control. Thirdly, we argue that these Instagram posts blend frivolity and thoughtlessness with resistance and self-expression, where personal stories weave into a larger communal narrative that offers bottom-up alternatives to the state sponsored “Singapore Story.” This intersection between Istana Woodneuk as a space, in contrast to other state-defined delineated places of death, and the infrastructural properties of Instagram are crucial to the construction of this larger narrative.
Smart devices are increasingly being designed for, and adopted in, the home environment. Prior scholarship has investigated the challenges that users face as they take up these devices in their homes. However, little is known about when and how users or potential users would prefer future domestic Internet of Things (IoT) to support their activities in home settings. To fill this gap, we conducted two co-design workshops, an in-home activity between the two sessions, and pre- and post-study interviews with 18 adult participants, who had diverse levels of prior experience of IoT use. Our findings contribute new insights into how smart home devices could adapt their behavior based on social contexts; how to re-imagine agency and support useful intelligibility; and how to resolve user-driven conflict by providing appropriate information about those with whom devices are shared. Finally, based on these findings, we discuss the implications of our work and provide a set of design considerations from which designers of future smart home technologies can benefit.
Dieser Beitrag betrachtet den Einsatz KI-basierte Berater-Tools in der Dienstleistungserstellung. Diese Anwendungen werden umfassend beleuchtet und klassifiziert sowie anhand von konkreten Einsatzbeispielen illustriert. Darauf aufbauend werden zentrale Herausforderungen für deren erfolgreiche Implementierung diskutiert. In Summe schafft dieser konzeptionelle Beitrag somit ein besseres Verständnis für KI-basierte Berater-Tools und bietet konkrete Hinweise für Praktiker, um diese langfristig erfolgreich zu etablieren. Abschließend werden zudem mögliche Stoßrichtungen für künftige Forschung skizziert.
Disgust may play an important role in several mental disorders, in part because disgust seems impervious to corrective information, a feature noted long before it was studied by clinical psychologists. A deeper understanding of disgust could improve not only the treatment of mental disorders, but also other societal problems involving this peculiar emotion. In this paper, we review the measurement of disgust and identify issues that hold back progress in understanding how to treat this emotion. First, self-report measures of disgust, although optimized in terms of reliability, are compromised in terms of validity due to the “lexical fallacy,” that is, the assumption that vernacular usage of emotion terms reveals natural kinds. Improved self-report measures that parse disgust from neighboring states of discomfort and disapproval can address this limitation, but these approaches are absent in clinical psychology. Second, “objective” measures of disgust, although free of vernacular limitations, require greater psychometric scrutiny. In a critical review, we find that most instrument-based measures fail to demonstrate adequate reliability, rendering them unsuitable for the individual differences research crucial to clinical psychology. In light of this assessment, we provide several recommendations for improving the reliability and validity of disgust measurement, including renewed attention to theory.
In recent decades, there has been a change in tourists’ tastes; they want to experience something novel. To satisfy this demand, a new type of tourism, known as “dark tourism”, has arisen; it has various modalities, among which cemetery tourism and ghost tourism stand out, in addition to very different motivations from those of the cultural tourist. In this type of tourism, cemeteries are not visited to appreciate their architecture or heritage but to explore a morbid curiosity about the people buried there; ghost tourism or paranormal tourism seizes on the desire to know the events that occurred there and tends to have macabre content. This study analyzes dark tourism in the province of Córdoba in southern Spain with the aim of knowing the profile of the tourist and his motivation. This study additionally will forecast the demand for this type of tourism, using autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models, which allow us to know this market’s evolution and whether any promotional action should be carried out to promote it.
Darryl Jones, Sleeping with the Lights On: The Unsettling Story of Horror (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), xii + 181 pp. £10.99/$16.95. ISBN 978-0-19882-648-4.
Psychological ownership, or the feeling that something is mine, has garnered growing attention in marketing. While previous work focuses on the positive aspects of psychological ownership, this research draws attention to the darker side of psychological ownership—territorial behavior. Results of five experimental studies demonstrate that when consumers feel psychological ownership of a target, they are prone to perceptions of infringement and subsequent territorial responses when they infer that another individual feels ownership of the same target. Potential infringers are held less accountable when they acknowledge ownership prior to engaging in otherwise threatening behaviors, and when they could not be expected to know that a target is owned, as it was not clearly marked. In addition, high narcissists are subject to a psychological ownership metaperception bias, and are thus more apt than low narcissists to perceive infringement. A multitude of territorial responses are documented for both tangible (coffee, sweater, chair, pizza) and intangible (a design) targets of ownership. Further, consumers infer the psychological ownership of others from signals of the antecedents of psychological ownership: control, investment of self, and intimate knowledge. Theoretical implications for territoriality and psychological ownership are discussed, along with managerial implications and areas for future research.
This article examines fear of crime in relation to exterior site features on a college campus. The authors propose and test a theoretical model that posits that places that afford offenders refuge, and victims limited prospect and escape, will be seen as unsafe. In three studies, the authors observed behavior, obtained responses to site plans and on-site responses to perceptions of safety in relation to exterior campus areas that varied in prospect, refuge, and escape. The findings confirmed that fear of crime was highest in areas with refuge for potential offenders and low prospect and escape for potential victims. In places such as campuses, which have pronounced fear of crime, designs that manipulate prospect, refuge, and escape could reduce the fear of crime, as well as opportunities for crime.
In the research reported here, we investigated how suspicious nonverbal cues from other people can trigger feelings of physical coldness. There exist implicit standards for how much nonverbal behavioral mimicry is appropriate in various types of social interactions, and individuals may react negatively when interaction partners violate these standards. One such reaction may be feelings of physical coldness. Participants in three studies either were or were not mimicked by an experimenter in various social contexts. In Study 1, participants who interacted with an affiliative experimenter reported feeling colder if they were not mimicked than if they were, and participants who interacted with a task-oriented experimenter reported feeling colder if they were mimicked than if they were not. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that it was not the amount of mimicry per se that moderated felt coldness; rather, felt coldness was moderated by the inappropriateness of the mimicry given implicit standards set by individual differences (Study 2) and racial differences (Study 3). Implications for everyday subjective experience are discussed.
This paper reviews the literature on sex and cultural differences in physical aggression and argues that only through understanding the interactions among evolutionary predispositions, hormonal influences, and social/situational factors can we possibly make sense of the patterns of human aggression that we see around us. Specifically, it is proposed that the process of natural selection has shaped hormonal responses in males that are sensitive to situations involving challenges to status and/or competition with other males, and that these hormonal changes are essential ingredients of the aggressiveness that occurs in these situations. Models of aggression that focus only on situational and cognitive/emotional triggers of aggressive behavior and attempt to understand human aggression without any reference to biology are destined to be incomplete at best.
Metaphors such as icy stare depict social exclusion using cold-related concepts; they are not to be taken literally and certainly do not imply reduced temperature. Two experiments, however, revealed that social exclusion literally feels cold. Experiment 1 found that participants who recalled a social exclusion experience gave lower estimates of room temperature than did participants who recalled an inclusion experience. In Experiment 2, social exclusion was directly induced through an on-line virtual interaction, and participants who were excluded reported greater desire for warm food and drink than did participants who were included. These findings are consistent with the embodied view of cognition and support the notion that social perception involves physical and perceptual content. The psychological experience of coldness not only aids understanding of social interaction, but also is an integral part of the experience of social exclusion.
Participants searched for discrepant fear-relevant pictures (snakes or spiders) in grid-pattern arrays of fear-irrelevant pictures belonging to the same category (flowers or mushrooms) and vice versa. Fear-relevant pictures were found more quickly than fear-irrelevant ones. Fear-relevant, but not fear-irrelevant, search was unaffected by the location of the target in the display and by the number of distractors, which suggests parallel search for fear-relevant targets and serial search for fear-irrelevant targets. Participants specifically fearful of snakes but not spiders (or vice versa) showed facilitated search for the feared objects but did not differ from controls in search for nonfeared fear-relevant or fear-irrelevant, targets. Thus, evolutionary relevant threatening stimuli were effective in capturing attention, and this effect was further facilitated if the stimulus was emotionally provocative.
This book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. Written by a cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, the book argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.
What happens when affective displays deviate from normative expectations? In this study, participants evaluated target individuals displaying flat, incongruent, or congruent expressions seemingly in response to pictures eliciting positive, neutral, or negative affect. Relative to targets who displayed normative reactions, those who violated affective norms (affective deviants) were rated more negatively on various dimensions of social judgment. Participants also preferred greater social distance from affective deviants, reported more moral outrage in response to them, and inferred that these targets did not share their moral values. Incongruent affect resulted in more negative social judgment than did flat affect, and this relationship was moderated by stimulus valence. Finally, the relationship between targets' affective expressions and participants' avoidant intentions was mediated by the extent to which participants thought the targets shared their moral values. These findings demonstrate the interpersonal costs of affective deviance, revealing the pervasiveness and force of affective norms.
Previous studies with adult humans and non-human animals revealed more rapid fear learning for spiders and snakes than for mushrooms and flowers. The current experiments tested whether 11-month-olds show a similar effect in learning associative pairings between facial emotions and fear-relevant and fear-irrelevant stimuli. Consistent with the greater incidence of snake and spider phobias in women, results show that female but not male infants learn rapidly to associate negative facial emotions with fear-relevant stimuli. No difference was found between the sexes for fear-irrelevant stimuli. The results are discussed in relation to fear learning, phobias, and a specialized evolved fear mechanism in humans.
The physical threat anticipation paradigm was modified for the study of anticipatory social anxiety responses. It was found that heart rate (HR) and skin conductance (SC) responses during anticipation of a socially threatening event (i.e., public speaking) were similar to those occurring prior to physical threat, with the largest changes taking place during the final portion of anticipation. Likewise, self-reports of cognitively experienced nervousness displayed a positively accelerating pattern of increase as the time of performance approached. The present findings suggest a psychological time-division process, such that the anticipation interval consists of an initial waiting period, followed by a briefer period of active preparatron.
During the anticipation interval high and low socially-anxious subjects displayed similar HR and SC responses, but differed significantly in patterns of finger pulse volume (FPV) and self-reported nervousness. As performance became imminent, high socially-anxious subjects evidenced increased vasoconstriction and reported greater nervousness than low socially-anxious subjects.
Taken together, these results indicate that, irrespective of psychometrically assessed anxiety, and/or type of threatening stimulus, the autonomic patterns during anticipation of threat are characterized by accelerating responsiveness. Thus, the temporal parameter of the anticipation situation (i.e., remaining time) is the primary determinant of reactions while awaiting threat.
Nonverbal communication
- L A Malandro
- L Barker
- D A Barker
Malandro, L. A., Barker, L., & Barker, D. A. (1989). Nonverbal communication (2nd ed.).
New York: Random House.