Julia Shaw

Well, people used to not smile in photos as well.

So I think looking at historical photos of children or sometimes even kids in other cultures, it's like, oh, why are they all so serious?

But our creepiness raters are also way off.

So this is something that I've been interested in for a long time as well, is that we have this intuitive perception of whether or not somebody is trustworthy.

And that intuitive perception, according to ample studies at this point, is not to be trusted.

And one thing in particular is whether or not we think someone is creepy, including children.

But usually the research is done, of course, on adult faces and with adults.

And only recently did we even really define what that vague feeling of creepiness is.

And it has a lot to do with just not following social norms.

And this is something we see that transfers to other contexts, like why people are afraid of people with severe mental illness and psychosis.

If you're on the bus or the tube in London and someone's talking to themselves and they're acting in an erratic way, we know that people are more likely to keep a distance.

There was one study where they literally had a waiting room where they also had people with chairs.

And the question was, how many chairs would you sit away from someone you know has a severe mental illness?

And the answer is, you sit more chairs away.

And there's a physical and psychological distancing that's happening there.

And it's not because people with severe mental illness are inherently more violent or more dangerous.

That is not actually what the research finds.

It's that we perceive them as such because we perceive them as...

weird, basically.

We go, this isn't how you're supposed to be behaving.