Dr. Frank McAndrew

You don't know what they're going to do.

Right.

And a lot of the things that we use to decide if somebody is creepy...

is do they seem to be playing by the rules or not?

When you're interacting with somebody, we have a script that we follow, right?

You know how you're supposed to behave when you meet somebody and what's okay to say and what isn't and how you're supposed to act.

Clowns break all those rules.

They have the funny clothing.

They have the makeup.

So you can't even tell who they are.

And you can't really tell what they're feeling, right?

So you can't read them the way you read other people.

If I'm having a conversation with you, I'm looking at your face to see if you're paying attention, if you're...

smiling, we're frowning.

The clown has this smile painted on his face, but I'm guessing he's not really happy.

And so we're on our guard against them.

All this stuff that we talked about earlier about having your creep detectors active to figure out if there's something to worry about, the clown sets that off big time.

Everything about the clown triggers that.

So they've always been something that puts us on our guard, especially when you encounter them in places that you don't expect to.

If you go to the circus, all right, you paid your money.