There is anecdotal evidence that creepiness is gendered, and all of the evidence on creepiness that I know of is anecdotal. The examples trend heavily towards women finding men creepy, rather than any of the other 3 gender combinations. The examples also tend to involve sexual interest (or suspected sexual interest) from the person who is perceived as creepy, even in cases which involve other gender combinations. These seem like important clues that can help us narrow down the hypothesis space, rather than modern-day rationalizations of an unrelated feeling.
Standard evolutionary psychology does include a disease-avoidance mechanism, much like the one you described, which is based on the emotion of disgust. One hypothesis is that creepiness is nothing more than an instance of that, but the patterns of behavior that people describe when they discuss creepiness seem much more closely related to sex than to disease. For example, if creepiness was evidence of an infectious neurological disorder then we’d expect everyone to want to keep their distance from someone who has shown signs of creepiness. But instead, anecdata suggest that avoidance motivations are extremely strong for the creeped-on person, weaker for other people of the same sex as the creeped-on person, and weaker still for people of the opposite sex.
There is anecdotal evidence that creepiness is gendered, and all of the evidence on creepiness that I know of is anecdotal.
Anecdotal evidence might be affected by a gender-biased sample:
The communities where creepiness is common enough to be a salient issue are “geek” gatherings. People who attend comics conventions, LW meetups, etc., are mostly male. Therefore, even if the average female geek had the same probability of being a creep as the average male geek, you would know much more male geek creeps than female ones due to this base rate bias.
if creepiness was evidence of an infectious neurological disorder then we’d expect everyone to want to keep their distance from someone who has shown signs of creepiness. But instead, anecdata suggest that avoidance motivations are extremely strong for the creeped-on person, weaker for other people of the same sex as the creeped-on person, and weaker still for people of the opposite sex.
Sexual intercourse is a primary avenue of disease transmission, hence it would be plausible that the creepiness emotion is more salient in people who perceive the sexual interest of an uncanny person.
We aren’t. It was my conjecture based on the fact that autistic people may have difficulties at reading and using facial expressions and body language, show unusual speech patterns (choice of topics, discourse structure, syntax, lexicon, intonation, etc.), poor motor coordination, etc. Thus, I hypothesize that they are more likely to elicit the uncanny valley effect.
Then why is creepiness so gendered?
Is there any evidence that creepiness is so gendered? It could be just a stereotype.
Even if it is indeed gendered:
Modern causes of creepiness (autistic spectrum condition, etc.) may be gender biased.
Males are less risk adverse than females, expecially when it comes to mating, therefore they might be less sensitive to creepiness.
There is anecdotal evidence that creepiness is gendered, and all of the evidence on creepiness that I know of is anecdotal. The examples trend heavily towards women finding men creepy, rather than any of the other 3 gender combinations. The examples also tend to involve sexual interest (or suspected sexual interest) from the person who is perceived as creepy, even in cases which involve other gender combinations. These seem like important clues that can help us narrow down the hypothesis space, rather than modern-day rationalizations of an unrelated feeling.
Standard evolutionary psychology does include a disease-avoidance mechanism, much like the one you described, which is based on the emotion of disgust. One hypothesis is that creepiness is nothing more than an instance of that, but the patterns of behavior that people describe when they discuss creepiness seem much more closely related to sex than to disease. For example, if creepiness was evidence of an infectious neurological disorder then we’d expect everyone to want to keep their distance from someone who has shown signs of creepiness. But instead, anecdata suggest that avoidance motivations are extremely strong for the creeped-on person, weaker for other people of the same sex as the creeped-on person, and weaker still for people of the opposite sex.
Anecdotal evidence might be affected by a gender-biased sample:
The communities where creepiness is common enough to be a salient issue are “geek” gatherings. People who attend comics conventions, LW meetups, etc., are mostly male. Therefore, even if the average female geek had the same probability of being a creep as the average male geek, you would know much more male geek creeps than female ones due to this base rate bias.
Sexual intercourse is a primary avenue of disease transmission, hence it would be plausible that the creepiness emotion is more salient in people who perceive the sexual interest of an uncanny person.
How sure are we that creepiness is strongly correlated with autism?
We aren’t. It was my conjecture based on the fact that autistic people may have difficulties at reading and using facial expressions and body language, show unusual speech patterns (choice of topics, discourse structure, syntax, lexicon, intonation, etc.), poor motor coordination, etc. Thus, I hypothesize that they are more likely to elicit the uncanny valley effect.