HI, I’ve read that people have phobias of clowns and facepaint and I’m wondering why?

I did have that same phobia for years and years and suffered badly. I recently overcame it (it took 2 years) but now I’m wondering why people have it?

It’s actually so common that there is a name for it – coulrophobia. While teenagers and adults do suffer from it, it’s particularly common in children. There are a lot of possible reasons for it. I always sort of suspected that it had something to do with clowns seeming somehow distant, or even dishonest.

Late last year, the University of Sheffield did a study of 250 patients in a children’s hospital in order to determine what themes to use to decorate the hospital. They found that not many of the children did like clowns. The study used words like “unfamiliar,” “frightening,” and “unknowable” to describe the childrens’ feelings. I think that’s really at the heart of it. You feel like this person is hiding something from you, placing a wall between you and them, and at a young age, that’s frightening. I don’t mean to jump off the deep with that, but it really does seem to be part of the problem.

I think that another thing that puts people off is the level of caricature. You take the human face — something so basic that newborns can recognize and gravitate towards it — and you distort it. And when you stretch something that severely, what is supposed to look like a happy or a sad face can very easily begin to look sinister.

Of course, any unpleasant experience with clowns in childhood could easily stay with you as an adult, whether that event was explicitly remembered or not (see the “Little Albert” study for a classic example of fear conditioning in children [and a great example of how NOT to conduct an ethical study]). And of course, clowns can just as easily bother adults for the same reasons they bother children. It’s not as common, but it’s every bit as valid.

I hope that this helps. Sorry if I deviated into psychology la-la land towards the end. I really love talking about this kind of thing.