Dr. Frank McAndrew

I think of creepiness as sort of a precursor to scariness.

Creepiness is all about uncertainty.

There's something that's not right.

You're not sure if it's something bad or dangerous that you need to worry about, but you're kind of wallowing in discomfort and you're like hypervigilant.

And this can be you're dealing with a person or a place.

So maybe you're interacting with a guy

Who's sending you a weird vibe.

There's, you know, his nonverbal behaviors are off.

He's steering the conversation in weird directions and you're very uncomfortable.

Now, this could just be an awkward person, right?

Who's not very socially skilled.

And it'd be kind of rude to like start screaming and running away from them if that's the case.

Yeah.

But on the other hand, if there is something to worry about from this person, you need to know that and you need to be ready to deal with it.

And the creepiness, the being creeped out feeling is what you're experiencing when you're trying to figure this out.

You're lasered in on what's going on here.

You're trying to make your mind up.

Is this somebody I need to worry about or not?

And the same thing happens with places.

You can be walking around in a place, you know, it's dark and there's a lot of shrubbery and