“Even the people who are supposed to like clowns — children — supposedly don’t. In 2008, a widely reported University of Sheffield, England, survey of 250 children between the ages of four and 16 found that most of the children disliked and even feared images of clowns. The BBC’s report on the study featured a child psychologist who broadly declared, ‘Very few children like clowns. They are unfamiliar and come from a different era. They don’t look funny, they just look odd.'”
Can’t Sleep Clowns Will Eat Me…The Smithsonian‘s Linda Rodriguez McRobbie looks into the history and psychology of scary clowns. “[P]erhaps as much as 2 percent of the adult population will have a fear of clowns. Adult clown phobics are unsettled by the clown’s face-paint and the inability to read genuine emotion on a clown’s face, as well as the perception that clowns are able to engage in manic behavior, often without consequences.”
