The reason why we find features that are “off” as creepy.
By: Eda 10.2
Have you ever looked at a drawing and disliked it because it made you feel uncomfortable for reasons you couldn’t quite put your finger on? Or whenever something looks a bit too human even though it isn’t?
There are some theories about why we might feel this way when we see something out of place. The general consensus is that our brain tries to find something that it recognizes, comparing it to everything it knows in order to narrow down what exactly that thing is. When it can’t recognize what it’s looking at, it feels uncomfortable as it’s something unfamiliar and never seen before.
There are many theories about why we might find these things to be creepy or why our brain devolved into a way of assessing this type of information in this specific way. One of these many theories is that we developed it in order to protect ourselves from potential danger. The unknown. To be able to differentiate between two look-a-likes, one of which may be safe and the other of which may be dangerous. This would explain why our brains would try to locate things that were off in a drawing or painting to keep us out of harm's way.
A sub-genre of this is the “uncanny valley” effect, which is described as “a distinctly non-human entity appearing almost human, risking cold and eerie feeling in the viewers.” This effect was first studied by Professor Masahiro Mori in a 1970 robotics paper. The study showed that the more “human” looking a puppet or a robot became, while still having inhuman features, the more eerie and creepy it made the viewer feel, only before becoming distinctly “human,” this effect would be at its strongest point. This point, or rather an area, is referred to as the uncanny valley. The emotional response to an entity that exists on the blurred line between something “human” and something unknown.
As mentioned previously, we fear the unknown as it usually brings little more than a danger to us, and having an entity that is nonhuman but seems to be human, triggers the uncanny valley effect, which makes us feel scared or creeped out by the entity we are looking at.
Another reason we find the unknown to be eerie may be due to our brains being hard-wired to assume negative consequences in every situation possible, this being done as a survival instinct in order to keep us safe. However, this hard-wiring does not work in our favor when it comes to consuming media with a lot of unknowns or unrecognizable things as this triggers our fear response, making us feel creeped out even though we are physically safe from most dangers we assume is present in these pieces of media.
Another thing to consider is that a sense of uncertainty can amplify pre-existing emotions. An example of this could be a viewer having a fear of spiders. This would naturally cause them to be uncomfortable by normal-sized spiders but if they are then shown a piece of media with a large, unclear, spider-like image, the viewer will have their fear of spiders triggered as the brain assumes the worst. That the image is that of a spider, and in order to protect itself triggers the feeling of fear that usually also triggers the “fight-or-flight” response of an organism, which is used to get them out of uncomfortable and/or dangerous situations. When this response is triggered as a reaction to an unknown or a feature that is simply “off” in a drawing or piece of media, it scares us and gives us an uncomfortable and eerie sensation about the media and our surroundings.
The reason we find features that are unnatural and/or off in drawings as creepy is that we evolved to find discrepancies in our surroundings in order to keep ourselves safe from any danger, as well as always assuming the worst in order to be prepared for a lot of dangerous or unpleasant situations, this eventually reflecting into art and different media to make us feel fear while otherwise being completely safe.
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