What makes things creepy?

Previously I had talked about what makes things cute, called kinderschema, and the evolutionary reason for them. Today I want to talk about the probable opposite of the cuteness, creepiness. We are all familiar with the feeling of creepiness. It's the feeling you get in the middle of the night, or when you you feel something supernatural or sinister. This may seem like just an human phenomenon that has developed alongside urban legends and scary stories but there is actually a discrete scientific and evolutionary reason for the feeling of creepiness.

When something is creepy, people say it lives in the "uncanny valley". I used to think that the "uncanny valley" was just a place that the supernatural lived. The term "uncanny valley" derives from the area between survival response and rest, or in other words, the area between fight and flight and rest.

Our body is hardwired through adrenaline responses and total physiological changes to respond to a threat with a instant reaction. The problem comes when our brain isn't sure whether there is a threat or not. This in-between area means our body isn't sure whether to respond or not to a possible threat. This creepiness caused by perceptory discrepancies is why many things are creepier at night. This causes the feeling of uneasiness and fidgeting that is characteristic of a response to being creeped out. A video on Vsauce talked about how this uncanny valley can be used in scary stories. The stories about things like ax murderers feel creepy because it convinces us that there is a threat when our minds tell us that there isn't a threat. It is this discrepancy that causes the feeling of creepiness associated with scary stories.

Another theory about creepiness is one by Masahiro Mori about human familiarity. Basically the theory is that as things become closer to resembling humans they get creepier and creepier until they reach nearly exact resemblance with a human such as a picture or a living human which stops being creepy. This is illustrated in a graph by Mori in which creepiness occurs as soon as the human brain tries to recognize the object as human. This is why stuffed animals and mannequins are not creepy as they barely have human features, while humanoid robots, ventriloquist dummies and dolls are all creepy.

There are several other theories about what makes things creepy. These theories involve the avoidance of pathogens, such as why dead things are creepy. These collection of factors provide the large scope of what is scary and creepy in our life.

One video that shows the varied aspects in person is the urban legend "Jeff The Killer". Here is his picture

So what makes him creepy? The almost humanoid features in combination with distinctly inhuman features create a feeling of unease. The smiling face in comparison to the killings in the urban legends and the unsettling surroundings create the contrasting perceptions that also create a feeling of unease. It is these combined factors from both theories that make "Jeff The Killer" creepy. These same factors will lead to the uneasiness that some people will feel at night due to seeing this picture.

Vsauce- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEikGKDVsCc
Masahiro Mori Curve- http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/040210-who-is-afraid-of-the-uncanny-valley