CREEPY PEOPLE LITERALLY

Christopher Walken

Give Us Chills

By Alex Hutchins

People feel uncomfortable -- to the point of experiencing chills -- when they’re around creepy people, a new study confirms. Researchers believe an inability to correctly mimic nonverbal cues, such as hand gestures and eye contact, makes someone creepy.

Mimicry occurs when one person copies the body language of another, explains Pontus Leander, co-author of the study and associate professor of psychology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

This movie starred Cher - do you know which one?

What does mimic mean?

Verb:	Imitate (someone or their actions or words), typically in order to entertain or ridicule.
Noun:	A person skilled in imitating the voice, mannerisms, or movements of others in an entertaining way.
Adjective:	Imitative of something, esp. for amusement.

Synonyms:

verb.  imitate - ape - mock - copy - simulate - mime - emulate noun.  imitator - mime - impersonator adjective.  imitative - mimetic

Jack Nicholson in The Shining

Humans mimic all the time, starting in infancy. Children learn by observing adults and doing what they do -- think of peek-a-boo. As we age, most adults unconsciously mirror others as a part of normal interactions.

“In the friendly situation, if you do not mimic, that’s when people’s coldness spikes,” Leander explains. “If you start feeling cold it could be an early warning sign.”

When people violate social norms, our bodies react with chills. Feeling cold is linked to a threat such as being forgotten (think left out in the cold") and the region of the brain that controls goose-bumps also regulates feelings of trust and betrayal. The chills warn that something is off about a person who cannot follow social norms.

Nicholas Cage

What is a social norm?

A social norm is a pattern of behavior in a particular group, community, or culture, accepted as normal and to which an individual is accepted to conform.  Read more  

According to Sociologists, Social norms grow out of social value and both serve to differentiate human social behavior from that of other species. The significance of learning in behavior varies from species to species and is closely linked to processes of communication. Only human beings are capable of elaborate symbolic communication and of structuring their behavior in terms of abstract preferences that we have called values. Norms are the means through which values are expressed in behavior.

Norms generally are the rules and regulations that groups live by. Or perhaps because the words, rules and regulations, call to mind some kind of formal listing, we might refer to norms as the standards of behavior of a group. For while some of the appropriate standards of behavior in most societies are written down, many of them are not that formal. Many are learned, informally, in interaction with other people and are passed "that way from generation to generation.

Steve Buscemi

The term "norms" covers an exceedingly wide range of behavior. So that the whole range of that behavior may be included. Sociologists have offered the following definition. Social norms are rules developed by a group of people that specify how people must, should, may, should not, and must not behave in various situations.

Creepy people are all around us: at work, in our neighborhoods, at shopping malls, and on the internet; hopefully, you will never have to deal with any of the people; however, some creepy people cannot help the way they look; yet, it is still very difficult for most of us to interact with these people on a regular basis.

We Were Just Wondering: 

How do you deal with creepy people?

Who is this?