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I want to get into scientific clown studies too.

The majority of people that claim to be afraid of clowns are just jumping on the bandwagon. Where's that in the study.

The awkward part is when your coulrophobia and coulrophilia get together, put on some Barry White, and make one hell of a neuron soup baby

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How do you determine the causes of a phobia?

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those are such obvious reasons

why did we have to waste money on a study?

asking the hard questions...

I don't fear clowns, but generally I find them creepy.

science is about verifying assumptions, not blindly accepting them. often reality is at odds with our intuitive perception of it

I can't argue with that logic

I have an acquaintance who is a semi-professional clown. She refuses to accept that some people (me included) do not find clowns funny or entertaining. I saw her working a crowd at a street fair and about 70% of the kids got very upset when she approached, didn't slow her down.

Yeah, I mean I hated clowns from being very young. Mum took me to a circus and I remember thinking the creepy guy with the weird face was not trustworthy. Then I saw him throwing buckets of water on people, except the water turned out to be confetti. I decided I didn’t want anything thrown on me by a person with a crazy face and screamed until Mum took me out. Must have been maybe three or four years old.

It’s not hard to understand why some unpredictable, weird looking person would be scary to kids. You can learn that they’re not scary as you get older but that initial strong emotional response will linger on some level because early childhood experiences are formative.