Creep/Trust Spectrum and the NUT Model

Why do girls trust some men yet feel uncomfortable with others? The answer lies in NUT: a way of comprehending how creepy or trustworthy someone will be.

Recently, I’ve done a lot of study of people’s experiences with stalkers, murderers, rapists (real rapists… you know, the gunpoint / knifepoint / beat-you-up / drug-you-up / tie-you-up kind), as well as just general creeps people meet in the streets, in the wilderness, and all kinds of places. Many of the people sharing these experiences are women, but there are plenty of men sharing them too. The vast majority of these I found on Reddit’s /r/LetsNotMeet (the best) and /r/CreepyEncounters (second best) boards.

Much of the time, before something bad happens, or even before the storyteller is aware of a threatening presence, he or she senses danger: adrenaline starts pumping, fear kicks in, and the person becomes instantly and suddenly AWARE. At other times, a stranger approaches, without causing any sense of fear or creepiness at all… but then, at some point, something changes (often something subtle) that makes the formerly unthreatening stranger grow frightening.

In some stories, the person under threat manages to encounter another random person or group of people to join forces with so the creep will leave him or her alone. Often the teller has a rapid sense that “this person is safe” and will make a trustworthy ally.

In a few stories, the creepy person turns out to have not been a threat at all, but instead someone with some developmental problem, or someone who mistakenly walked into the wrong house or room, or someone whose intentions just got misread. Much of the time, the creeps being talked about seem to genuinely be creeps.

Part of what I was looking for as I read all these tales was, “What is it that causes some people to set off creep alarms, while other people seem so non-threatening – even downright trustworthy?”

Because what we’re really talking about is “How do you put strangers at ease when you approach them, rather than totally unsettle them?” Very useful if you’re doing cold approach, or pretty much anything where you need to interact with strangers – or even people who aren’t strangers; social circle acquaintances, too.

This led me to what I’ll call the NUT model: three factors that determine how creepy or trustworthy another person seems to be – even if that person is a complete and total stranger.