A phobia is an anxiety disorder characterised by an overwhelming, persistent fear of a particular object or circumstance. Individuals with specific phobias who encounter a phobic stimulus will show an immediate fear response that often resembles a panic attack except for the existence of a clear external trigger (APA, 2013). According to evolutionary psychology, anxiety (phobia) can be viewed as a response that has evolved as a part of the human species' adaptive repertoire to cope with environmental challenges and threats. Anxiety may have served as a survival mechanism that helped human beings detect and respond to potential dangers in their environment, enabling them to avoid harm and increase their chances of survival (Price, 2013). Despite the study of Polák et al. (2020) finding fact that individuals are more likely to fear snakes and spiders than other predatory animals, the existence of other specific phobias still developed well in the population. For example, fear of clowns (coulrophobia). Coulrophobia refers to fear or disgust elicited by clowns or images of clowns and may be accompanied by significant distress (Planting et al., 2022). Coulrophobia, or the fear of clowns, is a syndrome that is poorly understood despite research showing that it has a high prevalence in the general population (Tyson et al., 2023).
The prevalence of coulrophobia
Although the words from Tyson et al. (2023) that research shows an individual with coulrophobia has a high prevalence in the general population, it is not explicitly identified as a specific phobia within the DSM-V. Coulrophobia is set apart from the four more general categories of particular phobias, which include those involving animals (e.g., spiders), the outdoors (e.g., heights), blood-injection injuries (e.g., needles), and situational phobias (e.g., aeroplanes) (Tyson et al., 2022). According to their result, 35.9% of participants from Asia reported fear of clowns, followed by 28.8% of UK participants, then 27.8% from Australia and Oceania, 22.6% from North and South America, 22.5% in mainland Europe and 17.6% from Africa. Asians ranked the highest in this. However, it is arguable that the number of samples is too small to be generalised as the number of Asian participants involved only 92 people. Several studies indicated this dread exists in many different cultures among adults and children from the American Fear Survey Methodology Report prepared by Rapoport et al. (2021).
The explanation of fear of clowns
As well as other specific phobias, the fear of clowns can be explained in several ways. The biological perspective postulates that certain individuals may exhibit a hereditary inclination towards the manifestation of particular phobic conditions (Fredrikson et al., 1997). Studies suggest the id's impulses can result in fear and anxiety when they are suppressed or ignored. Phobias are one way this internal conflict can manifest in human behaviour (Freud, 1909). According to Freud’s psychosexual stages theory, such conflicts are expected at different times in human development. The phobic object eventually comes to symbolise the confrontation. For example, the implication of the Little Hans case study might indicate that a child who developed the fear of amputation might emerge from the phobia when witnessing an upsetting event (e.g., a clown accidentally gets hit). One behavioural explanation for phobias is based on classical conditioning. If an unnerving event is coupled with an innocuous stimulus, individuals may develop a phobia of that stimulus. Early views regarding the acquisition of particular phobias favoured a theory based on fear conditioning (Watson & Rayner, 1920); for instance, after being scared by the clown “Pennywise” in a movie, a person (especially a child) could experience coulrophobia.
The trend of clown movies
The clown, supposedly a jolly figure of innocuous, kid-friendly entertainment, becomes weighed down by fear and sadness. “In one way, the clown has always been an impish spirit… as he is kind of grown up, he has always been about fun, but part of that fun has been a bit of mischief,” says David Kiser, director of talent for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Dating back to the silent film "The man who laughs" in 1928, clowns began to be demonised in the movies. The trend of horror clown films is depicted in Fig. 1, which was generated using data taken from Wikipedia and examined. Before the 1950s, just two instances of horror clown elements were used in films. It undoubtedly rose to 15 after the 1950s, then 19 in the 2000s and 23 in the 2010s. However, the production of horror clown films may have decreased in the 2020s to 2023s because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the early 2020s, the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted certain films, echoing its effects throughout all artistic disciplines. Blockbusters that were supposed to hit theatres by mid-March 2020 have been postponed or cancelled globally, and film production has also been suspended (Sacks & Ethan, 2020). The number of initially written TV programmes across broadcast, cable, premium pay, and streaming decreased for the first time since the statistic began monitoring more than ten years ago in 2020 due to production studios being temporarily shut down. The number of films in 2020 decreased as studios pushed their release dates to 2021 (and beyond), much like TV series. According to the study, there were just 338 theatrical releases in 2020, a 66% decrease from the 987 films released in 2019. In addition, there were 447 films predicted to have started production in 2020, a 45% decrease (Adgate, 2021).
Hypotheses and Aims
The illustration of analysed data inspired me to figure out the nature of coulrophobia. Nurturing an individual with phobic stimuli may trigger specific phobias, such as Coulrophobia. As in Fig. 1, the horror clown content movie trends flourished in the 21st century, when the psychological disorder with clowns surfaced. Therefore, there is a possibility that the development of coulrophobia, or the fear of clowns, may have been influenced by the negative representation of clowns in entertainment.