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Who are the Creepiest Celebrities?
What things influence a celebrity's "Creep Factor?"
Posted March 4, 2016
I do research on creepiness. As disturbing as that should probably sound to me, I will set it aside for a moment and give you some background. When I first looked into this topic about five years ago, I was very surprised to find out that no one had ever done a study on creepiness. This is especially surprising given how frequently creepiness is discussed in everyday life, and the little bit of research that was at all relevant focused on how we respond to things such as weird nonverbal behaviors.
Consequently, I decided to do a bit of exploratory research with one of my students, Sara Koehnke. We recruited volunteers to fill out an online survey through Facebook, and we ended up with a sample of 1,341 individuals ranging in age from 18 to 77 with a mean age of 29. We have presented our results at several conferences, and we currently have an article in press at New Ideas in Psychology. We discovered a number of interesting things about what makes people seem creepy, and I have described these in an earlier Psychology Today Blog.
Just for fun, during late 2011 and early 2012, I also did a small study in which 141 college students (46 males, 95 females) rated 101 celebrities on a “1” to “10” scale according to how creepy they thought each person was, how attractive they thought he was, and how much they knew about him (ranging from “I do not even know who this person is” to “I know a great deal about this person.”) I used only male celebrities in my study since our previous work had overwhelmingly indicated that men are more likely than women to be perceived as creepy (by a margin of 93% to 7%). The students watched a Powerpoint slide show in which a headshot of each male celebrity appeared for 15 seconds. The participants had to quickly react to the photo by rating it on the three scales described above.
The collection of celebrities was a random hodgepodge. There were more movie stars and TV personalities than anything else, but there was also a sampling of religious leaders, athletes, politicians, and other people in the news. Given that this occurred during the run-up to the presidential election of 2012, politicians who were prominent at that time were well represented. Most of the celebrities who were alive at the time, but several have died in the 4 years since the data were collected.
Somehow, I got busy with other things and forgot about this little study until I recently rediscovered the data set and crunched the numbers, and I can now finally share some of what I found. Please keep in mind that this is a small, non-random group of students from a single college. Most of them were Americans, although there was also a smattering of international students from a variety of countries. The results are intended to be for fun and I do not pretend that this study is “scientific” in any meaningful sense of the word. Anyway, here it is.
Who were the creepiest celebrities?
When the average creepiness scores were computed for each of the celebrities, we ended up with an inspired list of characters if ever there was one. I will post the “Top 10” in each of my categories, but I am putting eleven on the list in this category because Dr. Phil finished 11th and I wanted him to make the list. It is curious that Donald Trump made the list, especially since this poll was taken many years before he was running for president. Here is the list, starting with the creepiest and working our way down:
- Phil Spector (American record producer, songwriter, & convicted murderer)
- Charles Manson (Cult leader & murderer)
- Michael Jackson (Famous Pop Musician)
- Tony LaRussa (Longtime major league baseball manager)
- James Carville (Political commentator, democratic strategist, media personality)
- Paul Reubens (Actor best known as “Pee Wee Herman”)
- Donald Trump (Billionaire, TV Personality, & Presidential Candidate)
- Steve Buscemi (Actor)
- Crispin Glover (Actor)
- Kim Jong-Il (The late Supreme Leader of North Korea)
- Dr. Phil (Media Psychologist))
Who were the least creepy celebrities?
At the complete opposite extreme we have the celebrities perceived to be the least creepy. It is interesting how well represented African Americans and members of the British Royal Family are in this group. In descending order from the least creepy:
- Will Smith (Actor)
- Barack Obama U.S. President)
- Jackie Chan (Martial artist and movie actor)
- Morgan Freeman (Actor)
- Brad Pitt (Actor)
- Stephen Colbert (Comedian & Talk Show Host,)
- Prince William (British Royal Family)
- Don Cheadle (Actor)
- Ryan Gosling (Actor)
- Prince Harry (British Royal Family)
Several of the same names appear on the lists of the creepiest and ugliest celebrities. However, I calculated correlations between the ratings of attractiveness for each of the celebrities and their ratings of creepiness, and I will admit to being surprised that there was no correlation whatsoever between the two ratings – the correlation coefficient was virtually zero. In other words, whether or not a celebrity was perceived as creepy had nothing at all to do with whether or not he was perceived as attractive. Having said this, let’s take a look at the most and least attractive celebrities from our pool.
Who were the most attractive celebrities?
(Top 10, in descending order; all but two of them are actors)
- Brad Pitt
- Jude Law
- Johnny Depp
- Tom Cruise
- Will Smith
- Ryan Gosling
- Robert Downey Jr.
- Prince William
- Owen Wilson
- Barack Obama
Who were the least attractive celebrities?
(Starting with the ugliest and working our way down)
- Phil Spector (American record producer, songwriter, & convicted murderer)
- Michael Moore (Documentary Film Maker & Activist)
- James Carville (Political commentator, democratic strategist, media personality)
- Tony LaRussa (Longtime major league baseball manager)
- Michael Jackson (Famous Pop Musician)
- Donald Trump (Billionaire, TV Personality, & Presidential Candidate)
- Pope Benedict XVI
- Pat Robertson (Televangelist)
- Stephen King (Horror fiction author)
- Nathan Lane (Actor
The students in the study rated how much they knew about each celebrity. Not surprisingly, the ten best known celebrities were all actors/entertainers with the exception of golfer Tiger Woods and President Barack Obama. The least recognized and least well known offered more of a mixed bag. By correlating the score each celebrity received on creepiness with the score that he received for being well known, I was able to assess whether he got more or less creepy the more my subjects knew about him.
Celebrities who get MORE CREEPY the more you know about them
People in this category did not necessarily receive high scores on looking like creeps, but as individuals in this study said they knew more about them, the creepier they became. Guys from the world of politics are way over-represented in this category. In descending order – starting with the ones who get more creepy with more information:
- Herman Cain (Business executive and former presidential candidate)
- Kim Jong-Il (The late Supreme Leader of North Korea)
- Rick Perry (Governor of Texas)
- Newt Gingrich (American politician, historian, and former Speaker of the House)
- Glenn Beck (Conservative political commentator and TV personality)
- Karl Rove (Republican political consultant)
- John Edwards (Former North Carolina Senator & Democratic Presidential Candidate, tarnished by scandal)
- Charlie Sheen (Actor)
- Mel Gibson (Actor)
- Bill O’Reilly (TV personality & political commentator)
Celebrities who become LESS CREEPY the more you know about them
Some of the individuals in this category may appear creepy at first glance (e.g., Tony LaRussa), but those who knew the most about them found them to be less creepy. Others in this group (e.g., Will Smith) were not perceived as creepy by anyone, but those who knew the most about them found them to be even less creepy than others did. For some reason, there are a lot of actors on this list, so people who only know them from the characters they play may think of them as creepier than they really are. Starting with the ones who get a lot less creepy when you know more about them:
- Christopher Walken (Actor)
- Jackie Chan (Martial artist & actor)
- Morgan Freeman (Actor)
- Tom Hanks (Actor)
- Will Smith (Actor)
- Ryan Gosling (Actor)
- Jay Leno (Comedian & talk show host)
- Anderson Cooper (Journalist & television personality)
- Tony LaRussa (Longtime major league baseball manager)
- Peter Gallagher (Actor)
