Every once in a while, someone dresses up as a ‘killer clown’ and walks around town scaring the bejeezus out of people. But what's so scary about funny noses, brightly coloured wigs and big shoes?
WIRED spoke to Paul Salkovskis, professor of clinical psychology and applied science at the University of Bath and John Mcgovern, a consultant clinical psychologist, to find out more about phobias, why they occur and why we're so afraid of clowns in particular.
The British Psychological Society defines phobias as “an extreme, irrational fear of an animal, object, place or situation that most people would not fear”.
Salkovskis disagrees with the idea of phobias being irrational. “Being afraid of heights or being afraid of being locked in a small place and buried alive are all reasonable things.”
“In terms of a diagnostic classification system, phobias are a subtype of anxiety disorder,” he says.
Phobias can be described as fears that disproportionately interfere with people’s lives.
“It may be that we’ve had a bad experience at some point with this in the past. People learn that this thing equals danger, equals a strong fear response, and therefore has to be avoided in the future. When a fear is too great, that tends to become the phobia, the disproportionate fear and avoidance,” explains Mcgovern.
Each phobia is unique to a certain person and affects them in different ways and there are two different schools of phobias that inform how treatment can work. The two categories are specific phobias, such as a phobia of cats, snakes or spiders; and general phobias, including social phobia and agoraphobia, a fear of wide, open spaces.
They can often be linked to other anxiety disorders, for instance, panic disorder.
“People who may have agoraphobia, or a fear of blood or heights, quite often they may have a panic disorder, where they may have panic attacks in other situations, and the experience of the panic is so upsetting that they engage in a lot of avoidance,” says Mcgovern.
“In terms of the origins of phobias, different types of phobias are different in the time at which they start and the way in which they start,” says Salkovskis. Some fears are innate: the fear of the dark and fear of heights are often there from birth and can diminish, whereas other fears are not there from birth.
Specific phobias, like arachnophobia, often start between the ages of three and nine. Salkovskis believes there is an evolutionary argument underpinning this: if a poisonous spider bit you at a young age, there’s a reasonable chance you would die. “So it makes sense for fears to develop early for you to avoid things at an early stage.”
Specific phobias can often be linked to animals, because of the fear of being hurt. “It makes sense to have a fear of snakes, and certainly spiders and dogs are things that people have to cope with on a regular basis,” says Mcgovern.
Phobias like this can also be developed through observational conditioning or vicarious learning. Salkovskis explains that if a child sees that their mum is scared of a spider, the child would adopt the same behaviours and become afraid.
Social phobias, on the other hand, develop later in life between 14-20 years of age. Agoraphobia in particular often develops between 18-25 years of age.
“People develop fears of their own species after the age of puberty and we’re programmed to develop that fear,” explains Salkovskis. “In social phobia, it is not actually fear of other people but fear of doing things in front of people. Essentially, doing something which then people will reject you for or think you are a fool.”
Salkovskis has found that rarer phobias are often linked to trauma. “You do get some quite unusual ones, I treated someone who was afraid of vegetables,” he explained.
“But when you drill into that one, the case was reported by someone who was partially sighted and had been teased at school by people who used to hit them in the face with vegetables, and the other kids thought this bullying was particularly fun.” So the phobia in this instance was linked to the traumatic experience.
Fear of clowns comes under the specific phobia definition and often develops at a young age. This is a natural reaction, clowns are often big and loud, with exaggerated face paint that can be considered “weird, distorted and grotesque” by a young child.
“Anything which is sudden, abrupt and grotesque tends to be fearful,” says Salkovskis. “One of the things you learn as a youngster is to be very careful of things which are extraordinary in some way.”
Mcgovern agrees with this. “A clown’s features are exaggerated: big eyes and lips. And so it’s unfamiliar, because it’s strange and out of the ordinary,” he says. “A clown by definition isn’t necessarily a reassuring figure, it’s a figure of fun but it’s about surprises - like slapstick and unpredictable behaviour.”
But Salkovskis thinks there is confusion between the recent killer clown craze and the actual phobia of clowns.
“Leave aside the association with Stephen King, it’s a lot to do with context. If you see a clown or an apparently friendly looking person, coming at you with a baseball bat or a machete, you’re going to be quite frightened.
“Children’s fear of clowns, which can continue into adult life, is often to do with unexpected exposure to seeing something grotesque, but I think this has become confused with people doing menacing things in the dark.”
Treating phobias can be quite straightforward. The best practice is to speak to a GP, who can refer someone to a clinical psychologist or a cognitive behavioural therapist.
Mcgovern recommends to not live with a phobia if it is having a serious impact on your life.
“Most of these things are treatable and no therapist would force the person to take on something that is too much for them,” says Mcgovern.
Salkovskis agrees with this. “70 per cent of people with specific phobias will respond to a single session of two to three hours and usually at the end of that you can get rid of it.”
Though a general phobia such as social phobia will take a bit longer, it is still possible to cure a phobia such as this through a mixture of CBT and exposure therapy.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
