Ologies with Alie Ward

Serpopsychology (WHAT’S CREEPY?) with Frank McAndrew

October 1, 2025

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  • Creepiness is fundamentally defined by uncertainty and ambiguity, acting as a precursor to fear where the brain is hyper-vigilant trying to determine if a situation or person presents a threat. 
  • Males are rated as significantly creepier than females by both male and female participants, likely due to the evolutionary perception of males as being more physically threatening. 
  • The Uncanny Valley effect, which causes unease with near-human figures like dolls or AI images, stems from categorical ambiguity where the brain struggles to reconcile something looking human but not being alive (like a corpse). 
  • Direct eye contact functions as a strong social signal that amplifies the existing emotional valence of an interaction, making pleasant interactions more positive and unpleasant ones more negative. 
  • The perception of creepiness related to personal style, such as Goth fashion, is highly dependent on cultural context and familiarity; what is conventional in one setting can be unsettling in another. 
  • The unsettling feeling experienced just before realizing one is being scammed online is analogous to the uncertainty felt when encountering a potential physical predator, as both involve a perceived risk that is not yet fully confirmed. 

Segments

Coining the Serpopsychology Ology
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(00:00:14)
  • Key Takeaway: The term ‘Serpopsychology’ was coined for this episode because no existing academic literature on creepiness was found.
  • Summary: Alie Ward coined the term ‘Serpopsychology’ as the study of creepiness, noting that ‘serpo’ means to creep in Latin, like a serpent. This was necessary because Dr. McAndrew’s research pioneer the academic study of creepiness. The episode promises to cover the evolutionary origins and warranted nature of creepiness.
Defining Creepiness vs. Fear
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(00:06:30)
  • Key Takeaway: Creepiness is defined as a precursor to scariness, rooted in the uncertainty or ambiguity of whether a situation or person poses a threat.
  • Summary: Creepiness involves wallowing in discomfort while being hyper-vigilant, trying to resolve uncertainty about potential danger, unlike fear which occurs once the threat is identified. This evolutionary mechanism encourages overreaction to potential threats, like rustling in the bushes, to ensure survival.
Horror Movie Stages
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(00:09:39)
  • Key Takeaway: Good horror movies guide the audience sequentially through creepiness, then horror, and finally fear.
  • Summary: The stages are: creepiness (noticing something isn’t right), horror (realizing there is a problem but not knowing what it is), and fear (knowing the exact problem and how to deal with it). Skipping steps or lingering too long in the creepiness stage makes a horror movie less effective.
Origins of Creepiness Research
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(00:04:24)
  • Key Takeaway: Dr. McAndrew initiated research on creepiness after repeatedly hearing the term used by people who insisted it was distinct from fear or disgust.
  • Summary: The initial research was prompted by anecdotal evidence that ‘creeped out’ was a unique emotional state. The first paper on the nature of creepiness was co-authored with Sarah Kenke, a student who also had personal experiences related to feeling creeped out.
Creepy Stimuli and Innate Factors
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(00:13:53)
  • Key Takeaway: Creepy places tend to be dark and nighttime settings, while creepy people often involve ambiguous or unsettling visual cues, suggesting creepiness is largely innate.
  • Summary: The research identified images like dark underwater holes and spooky identical twins as highly creepy, suggesting that threats potentially dangerous to caveman ancestors (like dark environments) are universally unsettling. Cultural context can alter perception, but the underlying mechanism is likely wired into us.
Gender and Creepiness
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(00:15:51)
  • Key Takeaway: Men are perceived as significantly creepier than women, regardless of the observer’s gender, due to the greater physical threat males historically pose.
  • Summary: Women frequently associate creepiness in men with potential sexual interest, a concern less prevalent for men. This finding aligns with the evolutionary perspective that males are more likely to be the source of physical harm.
The Creepiness of Occupations
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(00:17:33)
  • Key Takeaway: Clowns ranked as the creepiest occupation in a 2016 study, followed closely by taxidermists, funeral directors, and sex shop operators.
  • Summary: Occupations signaling a fascination with threatening stimuli (like death or non-normative sex) attract individuals who are comfortable in those environments, leading to higher creepiness ratings. The 2016 clown scare was exacerbated by media coverage and online folklore.
Why Clowns Are Creepy
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(00:20:28)
  • Key Takeaway: Clowns trigger creepiness because their disguise (makeup, funny clothing) prevents accurate reading of their emotional state and they violate social interaction rules.
  • Summary: Clowns break the expected social script, making them unpredictable and difficult to read, which activates the brain’s threat detection system. Encountering a clown outside of expected contexts, like a circus, significantly increases the feeling of being creeped out.
Weary Willie and Clown History
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(00:22:59)
  • Key Takeaway: The hobo clown archetype, Weary Willie, emerged during the Depression as a reflection of economic struggle, and the performer Emmett Kelly later saved lives during the 1944 Hartford Circus fire.
  • Summary: Weary Willie, played by Emmett Kelly, was a downtrodden clown figure popular during hard times. Despite the character’s weary appearance, Kelly heroically held open flaming tent flaps to help people escape the deadly circus fire.
Clowns and Cultural Shift
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(00:25:01)
  • Key Takeaway: The cultural perception of clowns shifted dramatically toward creepiness following serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s association with clowning, reinforced by horror media like Stephen King’s It.
  • Summary: Gacy’s crimes, where he performed as a clown, created a lasting negative association in the public imagination. This cultural narrative was then amplified by subsequent horror movies, cementing the killer clown trope.
Seeking Out Creepiness for Entertainment
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(00:38:02)
  • Key Takeaway: People voluntarily seek out scary entertainment as an adaptive trait to mentally rehearse survival strategies for real-life threats while remaining in a safe environment.
  • Summary: Voluntarily experiencing fear allows individuals to learn what works and what doesn’t in dangerous scenarios by observing fictional characters. However, excessive consumption of negative news can lead to paranoia by overestimating the probability of rare, sensationalized events.
Risk Assessment and Media Bias
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(00:40:11)
  • Key Takeaway: People dramatically overestimate the likelihood of sensationalized dangers (like shark attacks or plane crashes) because they are easily recalled from the news, while underestimating common dangers (like slipping in the shower).
  • Summary: The availability heuristic causes estimates of probability to be based on how quickly examples come to mind, favoring memorable, rare events over frequent, mundane ones. Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for Americans aged 1 to 44, surpassing car accidents due to opioid overdose and suicide.
Uncanny Valley and Categorical Ambiguity
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(00:45:06)
  • Key Takeaway: The creepiness elicited by lifelike dolls and AI images is explained by categorical ambiguity, where the brain’s involuntary response registers the figure as a corpse.
  • Summary: This phenomenon occurs because the figure looks almost human but is consciously known to be artificial, creating a conflict between conscious processing and unconscious reaction. The fear of the dead (necrophobia) is thought to drive this aversion to things that look like corpses.
Ranking Dead Things by Creepiness
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(00:47:21)
  • Key Takeaway: The most offensive stimulus to the human brain is a freshly dead, mutilated corpse exhibiting sudden movements.
  • Summary: The research ranked stimuli from least to most offensive, starting with dead insects and progressing through decomposing animals to a human corpse. The apex of creepiness was defined by the combination of mutilation and unexpected movement in a dead human form.
Annabelle Doll Lore
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(00:48:40)
  • Key Takeaway: The supposedly demon-possessed Annabelle doll is currently in the possession of comedian Matt Reif, who bought the house formerly owned by paranormal researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren.
  • Summary: The doll is kept in a glass box due to legends of it being possessed and attempting to strangle people. Its previous handler, Dan Rivera, recently died suddenly of a cardiac event while in the same hotel room as the doll.
Dating and Avoiding Creepiness
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(00:50:42)
  • Key Takeaway: To avoid being perceived as creepy, especially when anxious about approaching someone, individuals must adhere to basic social interaction rules and avoid behaviors like unwanted touching or premature sexual discussion.
  • Summary: Anxiety can cause people to act outside of normal scripts, leading others to question their understanding of social norms. If someone is perceived as not ‘playing by the rules,’ they become less understandable and potentially threatening.
Detecting Self-Creepiness and Bias
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(00:52:18)
  • Key Takeaway: People are generally poor at detecting their own creepiness, and understanding neurodivergence or cultural norms can resolve ambiguity that might otherwise trigger a creep response.
  • Summary: Overwhelmingly, people believe creepy individuals do not realize they are creepy, often due to a snowball effect where loneliness leads to desperation, which in turn increases creepy behavior. Awareness of neurodivergence can ease discomfort by providing an explanation for non-normative social behavior.
Appearance and Creepiness Ratings
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(01:01:37)
  • Key Takeaway: Objectively good-looking people can receive lower creepiness scores due to the ‘halo effect,’ which biases observers to assume attractive individuals possess other positive qualities.
  • Summary: The opposite of the ‘horns effect,’ the halo effect means that initial positive visual traits can mask or mitigate behaviors that would otherwise be immediately flagged as creepy in less attractive individuals. It takes more effort for an attractive person to convince others they are a creep.
Eye Contact Intensity
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(01:02:47)
  • Key Takeaway: Direct eye contact is a strong social signal that turns up the volume on the existing emotional tone of an interaction, whether positive (attraction) or negative (threat).
  • Summary: Eye contact is highly arousing across primate species because it signals intention. In positive interactions, it increases liking, but in negative or aggressive situations, increased eye contact intensifies the unpleasantness, similar to a boxer’s stare-down.
Eye Contact Social Signaling
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(01:03:32)
  • Key Takeaway: Eye contact increases arousal and functions to amplify the existing intention of an interaction, whether positive or threatening.
  • Summary: Direct eye contact is highly arousing, increasing heart rate and adrenaline because it serves as a strong social signal of intention in primates and humans. A study demonstrated that high eye contact intensified positive feedback, making the interviewer liked, but intensified negative feedback, making the interviewer hated. Eye contact effectively turns up the volume on the current social dynamic.
Gender and Perceived Creepiness
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(01:05:32)
  • Key Takeaway: Due to societal perceptions of threat, women generally need to exert more effort than men to be perceived as creepy.
  • Summary: A woman’s ability to maintain eye contact does not inherently make her creepy; context matters more than the mere act. Because males are generally perceived as more threatening, women often have to work harder to come across as creepy in social interactions.
Fashion Choices and Conformity
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(01:06:16)
  • Key Takeaway: Self-selecting into non-conventional styles like Goth fashion can be a way to signal non-conformity, but it is only perceived as creepy when viewed outside of its established social context.
  • Summary: Adopting a style like Goth can be a form of posing to show one is not tied down by convention, aiming to fit in with others who share that style. In familiar settings, such as a college campus, this style is understood as a fashion choice and not inherently creepy. Creepiness from fashion requires more innovation than simply adopting styles readily available in mainstream alternative stores.
Creepiness in Online Scams
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(01:07:51)
  • Key Takeaway: The subtle feeling of unease before realizing an online interaction is a scam mirrors the predator-prey dynamic due to financial risk and uncertainty.
  • Summary: The moment an online scammer uses an unusual phrase or request that feels ‘off’ creates a creepy sensation analogous to a predator waiting in the woods. This feeling stems from financial risk and the uncertainty of the situation, making it difficult to reverse actions already taken. This uncertainty triggers a strong desire to retract, similar to how an armadillo or pill bug defends itself.
Challenges in Creepiness Research
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(01:09:37)
  • Key Takeaway: The primary difficulty in studying creepiness is the ethical and practical impossibility of creating truly realistic, high-stakes creepy situations in a lab setting.
  • Summary: Researchers can use static methods like rating faces or imagining scenarios, but generating genuine, real-life creepiness is practically difficult. Even if feasible, creating situations that genuinely creep people out would likely be unethical. Therefore, the research is often limited by the inability to achieve maximum realism.
Host’s Personal Scary Moment
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(01:12:48)
  • Key Takeaway: Extreme caffeine consumption combined with ambiguous auditory stimuli led to a terrifying, yet ultimately mundane, home invasion scare.
  • Summary: The host experienced intense fear late at night while home alone after consuming excessive coffee, leading to heightened terror. She heard banging in her closet, prompting police intervention with drawn weapons. The source of the noise was revealed to be her entire clothing rack detaching from the wall, causing boxes to slowly slide and create an elbow-like sound, emphasizing how ambiguity fuels fear.