PsychMechanics » Psychological tests » Personality » Creepy personality test: Am I creepy, or just unusual?

Creepy personality test: Am I creepy, or just unusual?

Last updated on September 9, 2026

Explore the behaviors that may come across as unsettling

Photo of author
Hanan Parvez

MA Psychology

creepy possessed girl

Humans have a remarkable ability called creepiness sensitivity. That means if you suspect that some of your behaviors creep others out, they probably do, because humans tend to be sensitive to creepiness in other humans and situations.

The test

The following test is based on the behaviors that people think are creepy based on research surveys.1Handke, M. A. (2025). “Women Are the Root of All Evil” The Psychology of Creepiness and the Patriarchal Fear of Women (Doctoral dissertation). It will tell you, based on your score, what level of creepy you tend to come across.

Disclaimer: Creepiness is neither a disorder nor a symptom of any disorder. It’s entirely social perception and sometimes unusual behavior can also be considered creepy even if it’s completely harmless.

Why do we feel creepy?

Because survival is paramount to humans, we evolved creepiness sensitivity to stay vigilant of ambiguous and unpredictable threats.2McAndrew, F. T., & Koehnke, S. S. (2016). On the nature of creepiness. New ideas in psychology, 43, 10-15. The environment consists of two types of threats. First, clear threats like natural disasters or a predator chasing us. Second, unclear, ambiguous threats like a stranger or an app getting to know too much about us.3Stevens, A. M. (2016). Antecedents and outcomes of perceived creepiness in online personalized communications. Case Western Reserve University. The latter may or may not be dangerous. But the mind doesn’t want to take any chances. It gives us the feelings of creepiness so that we may avoid the nosy person who could turn out dangerous.

If you think about the things that creep us out, there’s always an element of ambiguity and unpredictability (“Is that a threat or not?”). For instance, we don’t find monsters in movies creepy. The threat is clear. They want to crush us with their powers. But we do find possessed children creepy, like in the movies The Exorcist and The Innocents. Because children are supposed to be innocent, your mind goes, “Is that a threat or not?”

In a similar vein, if you see a person wearing ragged clothes going around robbing people, the threat is clear. The person is probably homeless and desperate. But when you come to know that a regular office-going person is a serial killer, it creeps you out because you don’t expect such a person to be so dangerous.

References