I did take that, actually, and posted my results. But findings that women are generally more capable of this kind of interpretation do not prove that it’s a sex-linked genetic trait. They could be more capable because they get more practice at it because they need to rely on it more than men. I don’t know, in short, whether it’s nature or nurture – all I said was that I tend to believe it’s “nurture.”
Just out of curiosity, I started a little poll over here.
Ted Bundy came across as normal to most of his victims, but some girls were creeped out by him. I read an account from one of the survivors. He approached her, his arm in a cast and asked her and her friend to help him move some furniture. She says that she felt there was something “off” about him and declined to help him. Perhaps more of the girls felt the same way and brushed it aside. If you study other serial killers in detail, in most cases, there were people saying that they felt there was something off about the individual in question.
While most of the guys who come across as creepy to me are probably just very socially inept, I don’t want to end up in situations where I will find out if they are dangerous or not. At the university there was a guy who always creeped me out but some of my friends liked him. People seemed to either find him creepy or nice but awkward. He lated raped one of my friends who liked him. Since then I’ve always trusted my instincts and been nice but distant to people who give off those vibes.
I did stare him in the face after the second incident, and said “No.” He said he was just joking, and I said “Well, I woulda laughed if it was funny. It just wasn’t.”
I also overheard him say to a guy who was rolling balls out of cookie dough: “You havin’ fun playing with your balls?”
I’m glad he’s not working with me today!
Oh? Oops. :smack: I apologise for the snark, Poysyn.
I guess my hackles are raised because I heard someone at work put forward that exact argument in a conversation about a fortnight ago* and it’s niggled me ever since - mainly because I couldn’t think of a polite way to explain why it was a stupid argument, so I said nothing.
(Nothing! Bah! Curse my slow thinking processes! A look of ‘WTF’ is no substitute for a reasoned argument.)
Anyway, I read your post in the same tone without thinking that you could have been kidding, and that wasn’t fair. So again, sorry for that.
*It was in relation to her husband’s friend, whom she said she’d always thought was a nice enough guy. But her daughter’s baby didn’t like him, so clearly he was hiding something. :rolleyes:
I swear, sometimes it’s all you can do not to smack the stupid out of people.
I can only think of one person who ever gave me the creeps and I couldn’t figure out why. There was just nothing about him that I could think of - no way in which his manner, or his body language, or what he said struck me as particularly strange or disturbing. Everyone of course thinks they’re a good judge of character, but I definitely always felt something was off about this guy, and I think later circumstances show that I was right. I don’t think it was anything specific about how he carried himself - he was a likeable guy, actually. He was geekish but funny, and I did like him, but that feeling coexisted with a weird, unsettling sense that there was something just not right about him.
He was a casual acquaintance - a friend of a friend, and my friend ended up sharing a sublease on an apartment with him and another person one summer. (I was surprised she did this, since I had mentioned at one time that he gave me the creeps, and she agreed with me. Hell, when she moved in we even joked about how she’d better keep her door locked at night and pile heavy things on the staircase so she’d hear him coming if he decided to murder her in her sleep.) Me and my friend got drunk one night and for some reason I decided it would be a good idea to look on his computer (like I said, he was a geek) because I figured it’d probably have porn and, you know, we could violate his privacy and laugh about it. (Kind of a dickish thing to do, in retrospect.) Anyway, he turned out to have a whole hard drive full of several gigabytes of child pornography. All carefully categorized, too. Thirteen gigs, I think, which is tens of thousands of pictures at least. (Also, some foot fetish stuff, which is not creepy in itself but it certainly put a different spin on his occasional offering my friend foot rubs.)
See, I think my instincts were right in this situation. Of course, he’s probably not a potential serial killer - after all, we all know that serial killers are always (well, so the media tells us) perfectly normal, likeable guys. But even if he posed no particular threat to me, I think I picked up on the fact that there was something just off-kilter in his personality. You know, the fact that he was a pedophile.
It’s nonsense to claim that our emotional reactions to other people are wrong or shouldn’t exist. Some people no doubt give off a creepy vibe even though there’s nothing wrong with them - I feel bad for them. But humans are basically social creatures and exchange volumes of information through very subtle and poorly-understood social cues. If a person evokes a particular reaction in you, there’s a reason for it. Think of people (usually as a result of growing up in an abusive home) who manage to pick partner after partner, and every one of them ends up being an abusive jerk, even though he seemed perfectly nice at first. Our attractions to people are based upon our ability to pick up aspects of their personality that we don’t consciously recognize, even if those aspects are something that (consciously, at least) repulse us. Very subtle social cues certainly guide our attractions (for good or ill, obviously, depending on the emotional health of the person in question.) It’d be foolish to claim they don’t guide our instinctive dislikes as well.
Oh, and incidentally I don’t have a vagina (well, except for the invisible one that floats over my left shoulder, according to one of my friends.) I don’t think a vagina is a good tool for interpreting other people’s social cues anyway. If “women’s intuition” has any significance at all, it’s probably just that women are more inclined to avoid people that seem creepy, since typically women are more likely to be in danger from men than vice versa. threemae, are you just reacting this way because you’re the creepy guy in the office?
The problem with this is that it’s anecdotal (no matter how many times we’ve heard this, it’s still based on remembering particular cases) and there’s no way at all to determine how many potential murders were prevented because someone decided the dude seemed creepy. After all, no newspaper stories show up that say, “Woman avoids creepy guy in parking ramp. Trip home otherwise uneventful.” And a lot of serial killers target folks that are leading marginal lives - drug users, young adults without stable housing, and so forth. The fact that those people are targeted may mean that only folks whose senses are dulled by drugs or the desire for a warm sofa to sleep on (or whatever preexisting mental condition caused their situation) are foolish enough to fall victim to most serial killers.
Of course this social skill is imperfect. But no one has offered much reason to think that it’s not useful. Even if it mostly causes false positives, it may catch the true baddies often enough to be a useful indicator. After all, our emotional wiring is just as much a product of evolution as the structure of our physical anatomy. We developed the ability to detect creeps for a reason.
Uh, that’d be the threat of rape. Are you honestly unaware that most women engage in certain behaviors specifically to avoid the possibility of rape? Avoiding creepy guys goes along with staying out of dark alleys and carrying sharp objects.
Oh dear, are the creepy people now organizing politically? The fact that you take offense is a comical illustration that you’re someone whom a lot of folks find creepy. Sorry. Dunno what you can do about it.
But it’s logically erroneous to compare disliking people because of their social manners with disliking them because of inherent characteristics like their ethnicity. Your social manners are something that in some way reflect who you are - that’s why we pay attention to them. Some folks probably have subclinical autism-spectrum behaviors or something that inhibit their ability to interact normally. Others had a childhood that was abnormal and so they didn’t develop normal social cues. Other people simply can’t act normally around people because they are not normal. All your protests aside, it’s irrational to claim that this one particular emotional response to other human beings - in contrast to the thousands of others we have - is wrong and should be ignored. We have social skills for a reason. Sorry if you end up getting the short end of the stick in social situations. Other folks’ instincts for self-protection are not something they should feel guilty about.
Great post. I have little trust in general for common wisdom, and this notion that serial killers always seem like normal, affable guys just strikes me as a media caricature, a bit of received wisdom that we pass along even when there’s no evidence for it. A serial killer doesn’t need to seem normal to get victims. He just needs to not set off alarm bells in everyone’s mind. If ninety-nine girls got the creeps for every one who helped him, it would still go unnoticed because we only have evidence for the times the serial killer was successful, not for all the times he wasn’t.
I admit that this may be a pointless nitpick, but “women are more inclined to avoid people that seem creepy” does not seem to follow from “women are more likely to be in danger from men than vice versa”.
If any group is more inclined to avoid people that seem creepy (assuming a link between creepiness and danger, here), it would be a group that is the target of violence more often than other groups. Since men are much more likely to be the target of a violent crime than women are, shouldn’t men be the ones who are more inclined to avoid people who seem creepy? If that isn’t the case (and, honestly, I don’t know if it is), then there must be some other reason why women are more inclined to avoid creepy people (assuming that that’s the case).
Am I making sense? It’s late and I need sleep.
P.S. - I just realized that while men are more likely to be victims of violent crimes, the chances of them being victimized by a stranger or non-stranger are about the same. Women are significantly more likely to be victimized by a non-stranger. It would seem that men should have a high level of creepy-detection for strangers, where it would serve women best to detect creepiness in those they know. (Again, assuming that creepiness and danger are linked.) I have no idea if this is actually the case though. Just throwing that out there.
“Creepy” is not a social group or a lifestyle choice. It is a combination of visual cues that a person might, in fact, be mentally ill, dangerous or otherwise off.
Creepy is not the same thing as being a jerk, a geek or socially inept. Some guys can say “You havin’ fun playing with your balls?” and depending on the relationship, it comes across as goofy joke. Other guys will come across as an innappropriate jerk. But some guys can say the exact same thing and it will really creep you out. Like they enjoy saying the word “balls” too much. Or maybe instead of showing slight embarassment at making a failed attempt at humor, they seem to delight in the fact that they made you uncomfortable.
I think you misread the article. It says they won’t be a stranger, not that they won’t be creepy. It also said “If they make you uncomfortable, chances are there is a good reason why.”
Sorry, I meant to comment on this earlier.
My wife and I had a dear friend in college, very much of a free spirit, who travelled extensively after graduation. She would renew contact every so often, and we would get together. Eventually, she settled in with a boyfriend very close by, but (paradoxically) the time between our visits grew farther apart. We finally met her boyfriend, and it immediately became apparent that they were both involved in drug use (we found out later that it was heroin). After meeting her boyfriend once, I would concur with Bites When Provoked’s description completely. I didn’t feel that I was in danger in our visit, per se, but I did feel that it would be very dangerous to stand between him and his access to drugs. I felt that any politeness or courtesy that he showed was really just a veneer, and that one would not have to go very deep to find a vicious, almost feral nature. Incidentally, they were both extraordinarily intelligent, educated and articulate people; not the old commonly accepted stereotype of a drug user.
Getting back to what people are saying about babies’ instincts towards people, most babies and children really like me, and I have absolutely no interest in them. I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in babies liking or disliking people any further than not forcing them to be around people they obviously don’t like.
Glad to hear you called him on it, rinni.
So? I don’t think you can tell if a person is a threat based on whether they are ‘mentally ill or off’.
http://www.psychologyinfo.com/schizophrenia/violence.html
http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/thought_disorders/schizo/news/violence.asp
Alcohol causes far more violence than mental illness but I bet alot of the people here who are creeped out by schizophrenics go to parties where everyone is drunk.
I think creepiness does have some uses. Like someone else said a few of Ted Bundy’s victims did sense something wrong. I remember reading about another potential victim who says after she carried his books to her car something about his VW and the passenger seat being missing made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She threw the books on the hood and ran off.
So I agree creepiness is sometimes a useful tool to tell who is a threat or not. And sometimes it is just a tool designed to enforce the status quo by finding excuses to exclude those who are socially off in one way or another. It provides a false sense of security because people equate socially odd with dangerous. But again most of the time you can’t tell what someone is truly like deep down inside until they tell you.
http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa38.htm
Based on published studies, Roizen (3) summarized the percentages of violent offenders who were drinking at the time of the offense as follows: up to 86 percent of homicide offenders, 37 percent of assault offenders, 60 percent of sexual offenders, up to 57 percent of men and 27 percent of women involved in marital violence, and 13 percent of child abusers.
How many of the people on this thread are ‘creeped out’ by the guy who makes too much eye contact or jokes about ‘balls’ but then go to parties where everyone is drunk? As I said, creepiness may serve a useful purpose sometimes but by and large it is just an attempt to exclude the socially awkward and it provides a false sense of security.
Here is a good book on the subject.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465014909/102-7465103-9956958?v=glance
I think the author of the book Freakonomics created an equation for threat assessment. “Outrage x threat = response”. Something with very little threat of happening but high outrage levels (strangers kidnapping your children) results in a high response but something with a huge threat level but low outrage level (falling down the stairs) does not. Kids are more likely to die by falling in a pool than they are of being kidnapped by strangers but parents fear strangers more than the pool.
Yet another exmaple of creepiness being a good thing with Ted Bundy (I wonder how creepy it is that I know all these Ted Bundy facts) is right after he escaped from prison and went down to Florida at least 2 people were creeped out by him. One was a guy who worked at a hotel where Bundy was staying who said he was ‘ratty looking’ and another was a woman who Bundy danced with at a party. After dancing with him at a party she said to her friend ‘I think I just danced with an ex-con’
I guess I would question whether men are more likely to be the victim of an unprovoked attack by a stranger. Men who get into bar fights and so on are not really comparable to women who are sexually assaulted by acquaintances or strangers. Not all instances of violence by strangers are equal - and it seems likely to me that women are more likely to be the victims of completely unprovoked attacks. I suspect that men are way more likely to behave aggressively and perhaps provoke assault from strangers or acquaintances than women are.
I think that the distinction between “stranger” and “acquaintance” is not a particularly important one. Most of the instances of creepiness that have been cited in this thread are ones in which the creepee is acquainted with the creepy dude - a friend of a friend, or a co-worker, etc. While the instance of attacks by true strangers lurking in the bushes is rare, a woman would be well-served by trusting her instincts to avoid being alone in a room with an acquaintance who gives her the creeps.
i would rather be in a room with nuclear weapons than a room of drunk people. i think a group of drunk people (esp. a fraternity of drunk people. never been in a frat house, and never, ever, want to be.) is the most dangerous thing in the world. very, very, unstable and able to erupt into behaivour that is incredibly viscious.
if i am at a party and it goes beyond a certain level (my own personal scale) i will run as fast and as far away as i can. if i come across just one person who is drunk or high beyond a certain level, i will get out as quickly as if ted bundy was in the room. drunk can be very scary and hackle raising.
That’s a fair point. I think statistics of such things would be difficult to come by, since few people who were victimized would admit they were provoking someone. However, I don’t have any reason to believe that there is a significant difference between provoked attacks and unprovoked attacks with respect to gender. (If anyone could provide any information on this, I’d be very appreciative.) Moreover, if creepiness indicates a tendency towards violence, then provocation shouldn’t be an issue - provoking a creepy person would be more dangerous than provoking a non-creepy person, so the ability to detect creepiness would still have significant utility.
Your statistics don’t prove your point, Wesley. People who drink are a lot more common overall than people who creep everybody out, so they’re going to commit more crimes because of it. WAY more crimes are committed by black people than by white chainsaw-weilding lunatics named Fred, but that doesn’t mean that one should be more afraid of black people and less afraid of white chainsaw-weilding lunatics named Fred.
It’s the same thing with your earlier child molester stats. Yes, given a certain act of child sexual assault, it is more likely that it was committed by a friend or relative of the victim than by a creepy stranger driving a van. But there are a lot more people who are friends or relatives of at least one child (ie, nearly everyone on the planet) than there are creepy guys who drive vans around.
To make statistics at all meaningful, we’d need to know the percentage of creepy people in the general population as well as in the criminal population. Unfortunately “creepiness” isn’t an attribute that’s easily measured, at least not in a properly double-blind repeatable study. We’re forced to rely on things like asking Qadgop if he has more creepy patients now that he’s working in a max security prison than when he was seeing the general public. (Dad? Little anectdote help here?)
No, it’s an attempt to keep oneself safe from violence, and most of the time it’s not even really conscious. It’s not like women go around tallying up missed social cues and odd behavior and at a certain point say, “Nope, you’re too socially awkward! Outcast! Exclude! Shun!” Fundamentally, people act on their feeling that someone is creepy because they do not want to die.
What’s wrong and what does unfairly exclude the socially awkward is not admitting that first impressions can be wrong and rejecting people much more strongly than necessary for safety.
rocking chair, you say you have never been in a frat house. In light of that, on what are you basing your strong opinion that they are extremely dangerous places?
Similarly, have you ever been at a party that turned violent when the partygoers got drunk enough? Have you ever been assaulted by someone who was very drunk or high? If not, same question as above - on what do you base your opinion?
Creepy guy checking in. 
I have poor social skills, owing to…well, the usual suspects (bad childhood, neglectful parents, problems with other children, blah blah blah) and it shows in any situation where I have to make small talk or deal with an unscripted exchange. Worse yet, I simulate having social and presentation skills in many situations; I’ve no problem in presenting or speaking in public, and if I have a topic to expound upon or I can fill the conversational aether by talking about movies or books or science I’m alright. When it comes to making daily conversation, though, I’m at a complete loss, and I often end up alienating people by saying something inappropriate or non sequitur. Even trying to do the Dale Carnagie thing and asking people about themselves seems to fare poorly, as I’ll lurch onto some topic or question that doesn’t encourage the foreward progress of conversation.
This also and perhaps especially goes with dating, or rather attempts at dating. I was later told by one woman who stood me up that she “just didn’t feel comfortable” not only in showing up for the date but even calling me. Since this happens with a frequency bordering on constancy (such as can be said about my irregular dating career) I take it that this is not an unusual perception.
Note that I don’t do the behaviors that one associates with “creepy”; I don’t follow women home to find out where they live, or make suggestive comments in the hope that I’ll program their linguistic neurons to become enamored with me, or stare unerringly at cleavage. I certainly don’t molest children, abuse animals, or engage in acts of atavistic violence toward women, panda bears, or office fauna. Indeed, animals and small children seem inordinantly comfortable with me, to a point that kind of creeps me out; it is untoward to have some unfamilar five-year-old trying to treat me like his long-lost uncle. I’m a stranger, damnit, so go away before you get the both of us in trouble.
I’ve done everything I know to try to reduce my creepiness; I’ve read books, I try to exercise whatever social skills I have at clubs and public gatherings, I’ve even sought professional help, all to no avail. My social circle, such as it could be said to exist, consists almost exclusively of a few co-workers and a variety of waitons and barstaff at resturants and watering holes I frequent. Yeah, I’m one of those creepy regulars who sits there with my book and nurses a drink or a sandwich just for some small measure of human contact. I try my best not to bother or annoy the waitstaff by making demands upon their company or expectation of anything more than basic service. Sometimes I participate in the private excoriating of a particularly rude or obnoxious customer, and in a few cases, I’ve made some kind of casual acquaintance with a waitress who’s bored and looks forward to an easy customer who tips well. I can’t say that I’ve any real friends, though, or even close acqaintances that I’d ring up for a night out or to see a movie.
I’d change it if I could, or if I knew what to do. I’d like to have friends, or a girlfriend, or just to be invited to lunch at work more than once every few months. I have a lot of good qualities that should make me a good seller; I’m well-read, a great (formerly professional) cook, I manage to remain well and profitably employeed most of the time considering the vagaries of engineering in our post-manufacturing economy, I’m not an alcoholic, drug user, or woman-beater, et cetera. But 
Anyway, not all of us “creeps” are dangerous, child-molesting, dog-kicking, meth-addicted, Ted Bundy-ish serial killers. Some of us just lack, for whatever reason, the kind of social abilities that are taken for granted by most people.
Stranger
That’s a good point, and I think we should also point out that kids can be shy of people for very silly reasons. I remember as a toddler being terrified of my first pediatrician, because he had a large bushy beard and bushy eyebrows. It got so bad, my mother switched to a female doctor. Years later, I had an ear infection, and he was the only one in, and by this time, I was seven years old. I met him and he was really nice, and friendly and I felt really bad for having been scared of him when I was little. He’s an awesome doctor with a great rep in the area-and yet, all it took when I was a child was a little facial hair!
But I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about.