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Socio-​Economic Environment and Human Psychology
 
Socio-​Economic Environment
and Human Psychology
Social, Ecological, and
Cultural Perspectives

Edited by

AY Ş E K. ÜSKÜL

and

Shigehiro OISHI

1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Üskül, Ayşe K., editor. | Oishi, Shigehiro, editor.
Title: Socio-economic environment and human psychology : social, ecological, and
cultural perspectives / edited by Ayşe K. Üskül, Shigehiro Oishi.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017046499 | ISBN 9780190492908 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Economics—Sociological aspects. | Economics—Psychological
aspects. | BISAC: PSYCHOLOGY / Social Psychology. | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS /
Economics / Microeconomics. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural.
Classification: LCC HM548 .S6176 2018 | DDC 306.3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017046499

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
 To my family members, including my father, my mother, my sister,
my husband and our 7-​year old daughter Mira Ayda whose level of
productivity in producing books I don’t even aspire to reach. You all have
been the greatest inspiration to me.
Ayşe K. Üskül

To my undergraduate advisor, the late Professor Tamotsu Fujinaga,

whose generosity and wisdom I will never forget.
Shigehiro Oishi
CONTENTS

Contributor List ix
Introduction xi
Ayşe K. Üskül and Shigehiro Oishi

SECTION 1 | Ecology and Economic Activity

­CHAPTER 1 Ecocultural Perspective on Human Behavior 3
John W. Berry
­CHAPTER 2 The Role of Economic Culture in Social
Interdependence: Consequences for Social Exclusion
Experiences 33
Ayşe K. Üskül and Harriet Over
­CHAPTER 3 How Rice Farming Shaped Culture in Southern
China 53
Thomas Talhelm and Shigehiro Oishi
­CHAPTER 4 Rationally Irrational? The Ecologies and Economics
of Honor 77
Dov Cohen, Ivan Hernandez, Karl Gruschow,
Andrzej Nowak, Michele J. Gelfand,
and Wojciech Borkowski

SECTION 2 | Socio-Economic Status and Inequality

­CHAPTER 5 Decision-​Making Up Against the Wall: A Framework
for Understanding the Behavioral Dimension of Low
Socio-Economic Status 105
Jennifer Sheehy-​Skeffington
 ­CHAPTER 6 Socio-Economic Inequality in Health: Individual-​and
Area-​Level Measures of Socio-Economic Position 129
Nicos Middleton, Panayiota Ellina, George Zannoupas,
Demetris Lamnisos, and Christiana Kouta
­CHAPTER 7 Socio-Economic Cultures: How Education Shapes
the Self 171
Rebecca Carey and Lucy Zhang Bencharit
­CHAPTER 8 Context Shapes Human Development: Studies
from Turkey 199
Çiğdem Kağitçibaşi and Zeynep Cemalcilar

SECTION 3 | Economic Conditions

­CHAPTER 9 Economics of Subjective Well-​Being: Evaluating
the Evidence for the Easterlin Paradox 225
Anke C. Plagnol and Lucia Macchia
­CHAPTER 10 Economic Shifts and Cultural Changes in Individualism:
A Cross-​Temporal Perspective 247
Yuji Ogihara
­CHAPTER 11 Dynamics of Culture Change and Cultural Stability
among the Shuar of Ecuador 271
H. Clark Barrett

SECTION 4 | Ecological and Economic Threat

­CHAPTER 12 Economic Conditions Cue Evolutionary Challenges:
When a Recession is More Than Just a Recession 299
Jeff Gassen and Sarah E. Hill
­CHAPTER 13 Disasters, Insurance, and Preferences 327
Yasuyuki Sawada

Author Biographies 353

Index 363

viii | Contents
CONTRIBUTOR LIST
H. Clark Barrett
Department of Anthropology
University of California, Los
Angeles
Los Angeles, CA, USA
John W. Berry
Department of Psychology
Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Wojciech Borkowski
School of Social Sciences and
Humanities
University of Warsaw
Warsaw, Poland
Rebecca Carey
Department of Psychology
Stanford University
Stanford, CA, USA
Zeynep Cemalcılar
Department of Psychology
Koç University
Istanbul, Turkey
Dov Cohen
Department of Psychology
University of Illinois at
Urbana-​Champaign
Champaign, IL, USA
Panayiota Ellina
Department of Nursing
Cyprus University of Technology
Limassol, Cyprus
Jeff Gassen
Department of Psychology
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, TX, USA
Michele J. Gelfand
Department of Psychology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD, USA
Karl Gruschow
Department of Psychology
University of Illinois at
Urbana-​Champaign
Champaign, IL, USA
Ivan Hernandez
Department of Psychology
DePaul University
Chicago, IL, USA
Sarah E. Hill
Department of Psychology
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, TX, USA
Çiğdem Kağitçibaşi
Department of Psychology
Koç University
Istanbul, Turkey
Christiana Kouta
Department of Nursing
Cyprus University of Technology
Limassol, Cyprus
Demetris Lamnisos
Department of Health Science
European University Cyprus
Nicosia, Cyprus
Lucia Macchia
Department of Psychology
City, University of London
London, England, UK
Nicos Middleton
Department of Nursing
Cyprus University of Technology
Limassol, Cyprus
Andrzej Nowak
Department of Psychology
University of Warsaw
Warsaw, Poland
Yuji Ogihara
Department of Cognitive
Psychology
Kyoto University
Kyoto, Japan
x | Contributor List
Shigehiro Oishi
Department of Psychology
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA, USA
Harriet Over
Department of Psychology
University of York
York, England, UK
Anke C. Plagnol
Department of Psychology
City, University of London
London, England, UK
Yasuyuki Sawada
Faculty of Economics
University of Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan
Jennifer Sheehy-​Skeffington
Department of Psychology
London School of Economics
London, England, UK
Thomas Talhelm
Booth School of Business
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL, USA
Ayşe K. Üskül
School of Psychology
University of Kent
Kent, England, USA
George Zannoupas
Department of Nursing
Cyprus University of Technology
Limassol, Cyprus
Lucy Zhang Bencharit
Department of Psychology
Stanford University
Stanford, CA, USA
INTRODUCTION
Ayşe K. Üskül and Shigehiro Oishi

S ocioecological psychology is a relatively new subfield of psychology

that investigates humans’ cognitive, emotional, and behavioral adapta-
tion to physical, interpersonal, economic, and political environments. By
adopting an objectivist perspective to psychological science and focus-
ing on how objective social and physical environments affect one’s think-
ing, feeling, and behaviors, as well as how people’s thinking, feeling, and
behaviors give rise to social and built environments, it differs from many
other subfields of psychology that typically focus on how an individual’s
perception and construal of the environment affect one’s thinking, feeling,
and behavior (e.g., Dweck, 2006; Wilson, 2011). This way, it moves away
from the study of the subjective, intrapsychic phenomenology to elucidate
how individuals and different types of ecologies define each other (for
reviews, see Oishi, 2010, 2014; Oishi & Graham, 2010). By focusing on
the ecology-​psychology interface, socioecological psychology acknowl-
edges the importance of the commonly neglected fact that people most
often think, feel emotions, and act in reaction to, and in the presence of,
other people and in certain physical, climatic, political, economic, demo-
graphic, and cultural conditions.
In this book, we focus on one of these environments, namely the socio-
economic environment, which impacts every aspect of individuals’ entire
life cycle. By doing so we highlight the importance of situating the indi-
vidual directly in the everyday realities afforded by economic conditions
and settings that provide the material basis of psychological outcomes and
contribute to bridging the psychological with the external circumstances.
This approach is important as it highlights the important role that psychol-
ogy can play in understanding the human experience as embedded in dif-
ferent (economic) ecologies and puts psychology in closer communication
with other social sciences, such as sociology and economics, that have a
tradition of attending to objective social structural factors.
In this edited volume, we underline the value of attending to socioec-
ological approaches in understanding the relationship between the socio-
economic environment and human psychology by including state-​of-​the
art research that focuses on the role played by (a) type of ecology and
associated economic activity/​structure (e.g., farming, herding), (b) socio-
economic status and inequality (e.g., poverty, educational attainment),
(c) economic conditions (e.g., wealth, urbanization), and (d) ecological
and economic threat (e.g., disasters, resource scarcity) in the shaping of
different psychological processes including subjective well-​being, con-
struction of the self, endorsement of honor, cognitive styles, responses to
social exclusion, food intake, decision-​making, health behaviors, and aca-
demic outcomes, among others. We grouped contributions under sections
that tap into these topics. However, as it will be apparent, there are cross-​
cutting themes that the readers will come across in different sections.
Our decision to prepare an edited volume to focus on the role of differ-
ent aspects of the socio-economic environment in human psychological
processes was motivated by the following theoretical and empirical develop-
ments. First, in our view, the amount of accumulated research designed to
examine the impact of the socio-economic environment on different psycho-
logical processes justifies an edited volume. Research in this area has already
produced large evidence on a rich set of connections between economic life
and human psychology, linking, for example, on the one hand economic con-
ditions such as wealth, socio-economic status and inequality, and economic
change with subjective well-​being, autonomy-​relatedness, and identity, and,
on the other hand, economic activities or structures, such as (wheat vs. rice)
farming and herding or market economy versus conditions of stable hierar-
chy, with perceptual and social interdependence, prosociality, coordination,
and motivation. The absence of a similar volume in the literature that brings
to the reader a collection of different disciplinary approaches to this topic was
one of our main motivations to prepare an edited volume that would show-
case the rich and diverse set of perspectives researchers take to understand the
link between the economic environment and psychological processes.
Second, researchers in social science disciplines other than psychol-
ogy that examine the impact of objective and social structural conditions

xii | Introduction
on human reality (e.g., sociology, economics) have limited awareness of
the contributions that psychology has made to the study of the association
between economic life and human psychological functioning (and vice
versa). This book showcases cutting-​edge research from psychology on
this topic and helps introduce it to readers in other social science disci-
plines. Although showcasing psychological research in this area was one
of our motivations, our ultimate aim was to bring together perspectives
from different social science disciplines. Thus the coverage of this book is
not limited to psychology but also includes contributions from researchers
in economics, anthropology, epidemiology, and evolutionary science who
take a socioecological approach to investigating the link between socio-
economic environment and psychological processes. As will be clear,
most chapters also draw links between different disciplines such as social
psychology, evolutionary science, and economics, reflecting the interdis-
ciplinary nature of the questions asked in this area of inquiry. Reflecting
the different (inter)disciplinary approaches presented across the contribu-
tions, this volume also showcases the different methods researchers uti-
lize including archival, experimental (lab-​based and field), correlational,
observational, and agent-​based modeling. We hope that the multidiscipli-
nary (and multimethod) nature of this volume will provide a gateway to
increasing interdisciplinary communication on the topic in the future and
encourage learning from each discipline’s methodological and theoretical
strengths to help advance the knowledge in a concerted fashion.
Third, research that takes a socioecological approach is becoming
increasingly diverse in terms of the location and type of the groups stud-
ied in different disciplines. We aimed to bring together contributions that
highlights this diversity. Accordingly, the research covered in this volume
originates from different parts of the world covering different geographical
regions (e.g., Turkey, China, Japan, the United States, Ecuador, the United
Kingdom, Cyprus) and kinds of human groups including wheat, rice, tea
farmers and herders, rural tribes and metropolitan settlers, working-​class
versus middle-​class individuals, low socio-economic groups, and individ-
uals who face recession or disasters.
Furthermore, most chapters adopt a comparative socioecological
approach that presents evidence for similarities between and variation
across the studied economic conditions and activities. By looking beyond
single groups and adopting a comparative lens, chapters provide an oppor-
tunity to refine, anchor, reinforce, or modify existing arguments and
assumptions about human psychology and contribute to the diversity of
knowledge in psychological sciences, helping our discipline move away

Introduction | xiii
from being a study of the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized,
Rich, and Democratic) societies (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010).
Fourth, there are now several groups of researchers in different parts
of the world based in different social science departments investigating
related research questions that tap into the relationship between socio-
economic environment and human psychology. For the most part, these
groups are not connected and are rarely aware of the commonalities and
differences in the approaches they take and the conclusions they draw
from their research discoveries. We hoped to prepare a volume that would
be instrumental in creating a coherent body of knowledge and stimulate
collaborative efforts to investigate novel questions at the interface of eco-
nomic conditions and activities and human psychological processes.
Finally, as seen by the Lehman shock, the Eurozone crisis, the yet
unknown but feared economic effects of Brexit and other recent booms
and busts, economic conditions are constantly changing in many societies.
In the middle of economic uncertainties and fast changes, it is timely to
focus on the impact of various economic conditions on human psychology
that should be of interest to scholars in and outside of psychology and eco-
nomics, as well as policy makers and the general public.

Overview of the Volume

We start this edited volume with contributions from leading researchers

in social and (cross)cultural psychology who have significantly advanced
our understanding of the association between different forms of economic
activities individuals pursue for living and different aspects of human
mind and behavior. The first section of the volume, titled “Ecology and
Economic Activity” features four chapters that highlight the important
role played by ecology, which shapes the type of economic activity in
which members of a community engage and the subsequent dominant eco-
nomic structures in how individuals perceive and act upon their physical
and social world. This section starts with a review chapter by John Berry,
one of the leading figures who introduced the ecocultural approach to
the study of human behavior in the 1960s. In this approach, he empha-
sizes the role of both ecological and cultural contexts in understanding
the development and display of human behavior and highlights the con-
cepts of interaction (reciprocal relationships among elements in the sys-
tem) and adaptation (change that takes place that may/​may not increase
mutual compatibility) in making sense of human behavior in context. In

xiv | Introduction
this chapter, Berry reviews research that focuses on the dynamic inter-
play between ecology and human behavior emphasizing consequences
for perception, cognition, and social relations. His review of studies (old
and new) sheds light into the evolution of ideas that have been examined
using the ecocultural approach and highlights the interdisciplinary nature
of thinking that cuts across different subfields of anthropology, cognitive
science, and psychology.
In the following chapter, Ayşe K. Üskül, a social/​cultural psychologist,
and Harriet Over, a developmental psychologist, focus on daily require-
ments induced by pursuing farming or herding for living and the associ-
ated consequences for social relationships. Specifically, they discuss how
different economies can give rise to different habits and social practices
and how these habits and social practices then translate into how indi-
viduals relate to others and define their self-​concepts. They review stud-
ies conducted with members of tea farming and herding communities in
the eastern Black Sea region of Turkey designed to examine the role of
social interdependencies individuals build with others in how they respond
to social exclusion. This chapter features research conducted with both
adults and children with a goal to identify how deep-​rooted the differ-
ences between these economic communities might be. In addition to high-
lighting the role of the economic activity and associated level of social
interdependencies in social relationships, this chapter also contributes to a
more refined understanding of social exclusion experiences by focusing on
the source of social exclusion (by strangers versus close others) and how
children respond to social exclusion incidents that they witness and how
they morally evaluate those involved in exclusion.
In the next chapter, social and cultural psychologists Thomas Talhelm
and Shigehiro Oishi focus on even a finer distinction between different
types of economic activities and compare wheat farming with rice farm-
ing in terms of the likely consequences for coordination and cooperation
among individuals that come from communities that earn their livelihood
from pursuing these economic activities. Their observations reported in
this chapter originate mainly from studies conducted in China based on
which they put forward a theory that links southern China’s history of
rice farming to its modern-​day culture. They first give a detailed account
of how rice farming differs from other forms of farming in terms of labor
requirements and need for coordination and how the distinct characteris-
tics of rice farming are expected to shape social relationships and thought
styles among individuals from rice farming areas differently compared
with those from what farming areas. They then present research evidence

Introduction | xv
that demonstrates differences between rice versus wheat farming areas in
terms of importance of the self, friend/​stranger distinction, and relational
mobility. Finally, they discuss the effects of modernization on changes in
rice-​farming and the potential shifts these changes might bring about in
human psychology.
In the final chapter of the first section of this volume, Dov Cohen and
his colleagues discuss a relatively recently introduced distinction between
three motivational systems, honor cultures, face cultures, and dignity cul-
tures, and then focus on the ecological (e.g., rough, mountainous terrain)
and economic (e.g., presence of portable, stealable wealth) structures that
give rise to the emergence of honor cultures. Next, they introduce the dis-
tinct characteristics related to honor cultures including short-​term irra-
tionality, which might prove to be a “rational” strategy in the long run.
They then test this rationality argument in terms of costs and benefits
using agent-​based modeling. Specifically, this chapter draws upon recent
work conducted using three agent-​based models that examine when an
honor stance proves advantageous and that explore the population dynam-
ics of strategies in the environment. They demonstrate that the long-​term
effects of short-​term irrationalities observed in honor cultures may in fact
be rational in that they help maximize desired outcomes for the individual
and social group at large.
The second section of the volume, titled “Socio-economic Status and
Inequality,” features four chapters that highlight the role of socio-economic
conditions in decision-​making, health, and the self. This section starts with
a chapter by the social psychologist Jennifer Sheehy-​Skeffington, who
surveys a wide range of evidence for socio-economic status (SES) dispari-
ties in health behavior, economic decisions, and educational outcomes.
She further examines an intriguing question regarding why low-​SES indi-
viduals are more likely than high-​SES individuals to engage in disadvan-
tageous behaviors (e.g., health-​damaging behaviors, suboptimal financial
decisions). She offers a new framework for understanding this important
phenomenon based on the psychology of resource scarcity (e.g., weakened
executive function) and self-​regulation (e.g., less ability to act in line with
long-​term goals). In the end, Sheehy-​Skeffington advocates a shift away
from the deficit model of poverty to the adaptive, life history theory of
poverty.
In the second chapter of this section, the epidemiologist Nicos
Middleton and his colleagues explore the role of socio-economic posi­
tion in health. The authors focus on the relative position of an individual
household and a community in their analyses. At the individual level of

xvi | Introduction
analysis, Middleton and colleagues examine the role of education, income/​
wealth, and occupational status. At the level of community, they use the
census-​ based measure of neighborhood deprivation (e.g., unemploy-
ment rate, overcrowding), as well as new multiple indicators that include
income, air quality, and crime rate. Besides objective indices of neighbor-
hood deprivation, some researchers use the aggregate of survey responses
on concepts such as social capital and collective efficacy. This chapter also
provides a useful guideline for indices of community-​level deprivation.
The third chapter in this section by social and cultural psychologists
Rebecca Carey and Lucy Zhang Bencharit focuses on the role of socio-
economic cultures, defined primarily by level of educational attainment,
in human behavior through their impact on one’s experience of self as
either independent or interdependent. They first outline how level of
educational attainment shapes sociocultural and socio-economic reali-
ties through their impact on interactions and social networks; the norms,
rules, policies, and practices of formal institutions; and ideas about what
is good and normative. They then summarize research illustrating how
high school and college-​educated contexts can breed an interdependent
self and independent self, respectively, and the consequences these con-
texts create for cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes. Finally,
they focus attention on how parental educational attainment influences
children’s educational attainment, further contributing to disparities in
our societies and put forward suggestions that are grounded in research
for how to overcome these disparities. This chapter contributes to our
understanding of how education can have psychological outcomes, going
beyond the traditional focus of social sciences on the importance of edu-
cation for economic outcomes.
The fourth and final chapter in this section by Çiğdem Kağitçibaşi
and Zeynep Cemalcılar, two social developmental psychologists, first
discusses the importance of socio-economic context for human develop-
ment including topics such as parenting and schooling. The authors then
introduce Kağitçibaşi’s theory of family change that takes into account the
dynamic interplay between different aspects of social and economic context
(e.g., urban-​rural habitat, SES, level of affluence) and how this can lead to
the emergence of different types of family models. This approach empha-
sizes that families and the parenting styles they adopt adapt to the require-
ments of socio-economic contexts and transform with contextual changes,
especially with increasing levels of urbanization and socio-economic devel-
opment. To highlight the role of socio-economic status in human devel-
opment, the authors present findings from research conducted in Turkey,

Introduction | xvii
a cultural context with high levels of social change in recent times, that
demonstrates the detrimental effects of low SES on various social (e.g.,
prosocial behaviors), developmental (e.g., children’s vocabulary), and aca-
demic (e.g., school dropout) outcomes. They also present findings from an
intervention study aiming to counteract some of the negative consequences
of low SES on child development. Their approach not only emphasizes
the importance of socio-economic context on human development but
also takes into account the changing nature of socio-economic factors. It
also situates family as a socializing unit at the core to understand the link
between changing environmental conditions and the self.
The third section of the volume, titled “Economic Conditions,” brings
together three contributions that focus on the role of changes in economic
conditions in subjective well-​being, individualism-​collectivism, and cul-
ture at large. The economists Anke C. Plagnol and Lucia Macchia tackle
a paradoxical finding initially observed by Richard Easterlin, called the
Easterlin paradox: Even though wealthy individuals are happier than
poor individuals, economic growth has not increased citizens’ happiness
in many countries, including the United States. Recently, however, some
researchers have challenged Easterlin’s original observations and shown
that economic growth has increased citizens’ happiness in some countries.
Plagnol and Macchia review the latest empirical evidence and argue that
the Easterlin paradox is still present. Furthermore, the authors explore the
factors that contribute to the Easterlin paradox such as social comparison,
hedonic adaptation, and consumption norms.
The second chapter in this section by the social and cultural psychol-
ogist Yuji Ogihara takes a temporal perspective to understand how eco-
nomic shifts are associated with changes in individualism in the United
States, Japan, and China. The author builds on previous research demon-
strating that wealth and individualism are positively associated both at the
individual and the national level and asks whether this relationship is also
present at the temporal level. He first introduces a theoretical account for
why economic affluence and level of individualism may be associated. He
then presents empirical evidence on economic development in the United
States, Japan, and China and temporal changes in individualism focus-
ing on historical shifts in family structure (divorce rate, household size),
baby naming practices, and individualistic nature of words in books. He
concludes that, over time, as a society becomes more affluent, it becomes
more individualistic. He discusses potential underlying mechanisms for
this association and makes valuable suggestions for future research in this
growing field of inquiry.

xviii | Introduction
 The final chapter in this section by anthropologist H. Clark Barrett
examines culture change and culture stability among the Shuar, an indig-
enous Amazonian society in southeastern Ecuador, a community that is
undergoing rapid changes in technology and infrastructure leading to
shifts in the economic (e.g., resource sharing, acquisition, and distribu-
tion) and social (e.g., marriage and family structures) life. Using a cultural
evolutionary perspective, he asks which aspects of the Shuar economic
and social life are expected to change and which aspects are expected to
remain stable. He also discusses possible processes that shape cultural
change and stasis among the Shuar. Through this specific example, Barrett
engages with broader questions concerning the dynamics of human cul-
tural history, focusing on the bidirectional feedback between environmen-
tal structures and individual behavior.
The fourth and final section of the volume, titled “Ecological and
Economic Threat,” brings together two contributions that focus on differ-
ent kinds of threats: recessions and disasters. Economists, sociologists,
and other social scientists have documented the effects of economic crises
or threats on various human behaviors, ranging from consumer spending
to criminal activities to voting. The links are fairly straightforward—​such
as the finding that people do not spend as much money on nonessential
items during a recession as they do during an economic boom—​and do
not require much psychological analysis. However, recent research emerg-
ing from psychology and economics research showed more distal, nonin-
tuitive links between economic conditions and human behaviors. The last
two chapters provide us an introduction into psychological responses to
ecological and economic threats and how it might be possible to find pro-
tection against the damaging consequences of such threats.
The chapter by Jeff Gassen, an experimental psychologist, and Sarah
Hill, a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary psychologist, reviews
research that has approached psychological responses to one particular
type of economic threat, namely resource scarcity, from an evolution-
ary perspective. First, they focus on the effects of economic conditions
encountered in childhood on critical developmental outcomes (e.g., thrifty
phenotype, eating in the absence of hunger). Next, they review studies that
examine how market forces can shape interpersonal relationships (e.g.,
degree of trust toward and inclusion of others into our in-​groups). Finally,
they discuss findings demonstrating the role of recessions in providing
information about the local mating market and the benefits and costs asso-
ciated with investing in mating and parenting (e.g., men’s attitudes toward
wealth distribution, use of cosmetics, parental investment). Given the

Introduction | xix
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Bacchus, until he has the whole Bathyllus as a finished Apollo from
the artist’s hand.
μετὰ δὲ πρόσωπον ἔστω,
τὸν Ἀδώνιδος παρελθὼν,
ἐλεφάντινος τράχηλος·
μεταμάζιον δὲ ποίει
διδύμας τε χεῖρας Ἑρμοῦ,
Πολυδεύκεος δὲ μηρούς,
Διονυσίην δὲ νηδύν.

· · · · ·

τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα δὲ τοῦτον

καθελών, ποίει Βάθυλλον.

Thus Lucian, to give an idea of the beauty of Panthea, points to the

most beautiful female statues by the old sculptors.[137] What is this
but a confession that here language of itself is powerless; that poetry
stammers, and eloquence grows dumb, unless art serve as
interpreter.
 XXI.

But are we not robbing poetry of too much by taking from her all
pictures of physical beauty?
Who seeks to take them from her? We are only warning her
against trying to arrive at them by a particular road, where she will
blindly grope her way in the footsteps of a sister art without ever
reaching the goal. We are not closing against her other roads
whereon art can follow only with her eyes.
Homer himself, who so persistently refrains from all detailed
descriptions of physical beauty, that we barely learn, from a passing
mention, that Helen had white arms[138] and beautiful hair,[139] even
he manages nevertheless to give us an idea of her beauty, which far
surpasses any thing that art could do. Recall the passage where
Helen enters the assembly of the Trojan elders. The venerable men
see her coming, and one says to the others:[140]—
Οὐ νέμεσις Τρῶας καὶ ἐϋκνήμιδας Ἀχαιοὺς
τοιῇδ’ ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄλγεα πάσχειν·
αἰνῶς ἀθανάτῃσι θεῇς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν.

What can give a more vivid idea of her beauty than that cold-blooded
age should deem it well worth the war which had cost so much blood
and so many tears?
What Homer could not describe in its details, he shows us by its
effect. Paint us, ye poets, the delight, the attraction, the love, the
enchantment of beauty, and you have painted beauty itself. Who can
think of Sappho’s beloved, the sight of whom, as she confesses, robs
her of sense and thought, as ugly? We seem to be gazing on a
beautiful and perfect form, when we sympathize with the emotions
which only such a form can produce. It is not Ovid’s minute
description of the beauties of his Lesbia,—
 Quos humeros, quales vidi tetigique lacertos!
Forma papillarum quam fuit apta premi!
Quam castigato planus sub pectore venter!
Quantum et quale latus! quam juvenile femur!

that makes us fancy we are enjoying the same sight which he

enjoyed; but because he gives the details with a sensuousness which
stirs the passions.
Yet another way in which poetry surpasses art in the description of
physical beauty, is by turning beauty into charm. Charm is beauty in
motion, and therefore less adapted to the painter than the poet. The
painter can suggest motion, but his figures are really destitute of it.
Charm therefore in a picture becomes grimace, while in poetry it
remains what it is, a transitory beauty, which we would fain see
repeated. It comes and goes, and since we can recall a motion more
vividly and easily than mere forms and colors, charm must affect us
more strongly than beauty under the same conditions. All that
touches and pleases in the picture of Alcina is charm. Her eyes
impress us not from their blackness and fire, but because they are—
Pietosi a riguardar, a mover parchi,

they move slowly and with gracious glances, because Cupid sports
around them and shoots from them his arrows. Her mouth pleases,
not because vermilion lips enclose two rows of orient pearls, but
because of the gentle smile, which opens a paradise on earth, and of
the courteous accents that melt the rudest heart. The enchantment of
her bosom lies not so much in the milk and ivory and apples, that
typify its whiteness and graceful form, as in its gentle heavings, like
the rise and fall of waves under a pleasant breeze.
Due pome acerbe, e pur d’ avorio fatte,
Vengono e van, come onda al primo margo,
Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte.

I am convinced that such traits as these, compressed into one or two

stanzas, would be far more effective than the five over which Ariosto
has spread them, interspersed with cold descriptions of form much
too learned for our sensibilities.
Anacreon preferred the apparent absurdity of requiring
impossibilities of the artist, to leaving the image of his mistress
unenlivened with these mobile charms.
τρυφεροῦ δ’ ἔσω γενείου
περὶ λυγδίνῳ τραχήλῳ
Χάριτες πέτοιντο πᾶσαι.

He bids the artist let all the graces hover about her tender chin and
marble neck. How so? literally? But that is beyond the power of art.
The painter could give the chin the most graceful curve and the
prettiest dimple, Amoris digitulo impressum (for the ἔσω here seems
to me to mean dimple); he could give the neck the softest pink, but
that is all. The motion of that beautiful neck, the play of the muscles,
now deepening and now half concealing the dimple, the essential
charm exceeded his powers. The poet went to the limits of his art in
the attempt to give us a vivid picture of beauty, in order that the
painter might seek the highest expression in his. Here we have,
therefore, a fresh illustration of what was urged above, that the poet,
even when speaking of a painting or statue, is not bound to confine
his description within the limits of art.
 XXII.

Zeuxis painted a Helen, and had the courage to write beneath his
picture those famous lines of Homer wherein the elders express their
admiration of her beauty. Never did painting and poetry engage in
closer rivalry. Victory remained undecided, and both deserved to be
crowned.
For as the wise poet showed us only in its effects the beauty which
he felt the impossibility of describing in detail, so the equally wise
painter exhibited beauty solely through its details, deeming it
unworthy of his art to have recourse to any outward aids. His whole
picture was the naked figure of Helen. For it was probably the same
that he painted for the people of Cortona.[141]
Let us, for curiosity’s sake, compare with this Caylus’s picture as
sketched for modern artists from the same lines of Homer.
“Helen, covered with a white veil, appears in the midst of several
old men, Priam among the number, who should be at once
recognizable by the emblems of his royal dignity. The artist must
especially exert his skill to make us feel the triumph of beauty in the
eager glances and expressions of astonished admiration on the
countenances of the old men. The scene is over one of the gates of
the town. The background of the painting may be lost either in the
open sky or against the higher buildings of the town. The first would
be the bolder, but the one would be as suitable as the other.”
Imagine this picture, executed by the greatest master of our time,
and compare it with the work of Zeuxis. Which will show the real
triumph of beauty? This, where I feel it myself, or that, where I am to
infer it from the grimaces of admiring graybeards? “Turpe senilis
amor!” Looks of desire make the most reverend face ridiculous, and
an old man who shows the cravings of youth is an object of disgust.
This reproach cannot be brought against the Homeric elders. Theirs
is but a passing spark of feeling which wisdom instantly stifles; an
emotion which does honor to Helen without disgracing themselves.
They acknowledge their admiration, but add at once,[142]—
ἀλλὰ καὶ ὣς, τοίη περ ἐοῦσ’, ἐν νηυσὶ νεέσθω,
μηδ’ ἡμῖν τεκέεσσί τ’ ὀπίσσω πῆμα λίποιτο.

This decision saves them from being the old coxcombs which they
look like in Caylus’s picture. And what is the sight that fixes their
eager looks? A veiled, muffled figure. Is that Helen? I cannot
conceive what induced Caylus to make her wear a veil. Homer, to be
sure, expressly gives her one,
αὐτίκα δ’ ἀργεννῇσι καλυψαμένη ὀθόνῃσιν
ὡρμᾶτ’ ἐκ θαλάμοιο,

“She left her chamber, robed and veiled in white,”

but only to cross the street in. And although he makes the elders
express their admiration before she could have had time to take it off
or throw it back, yet they were not seeing her then for the first time.
Their confession need not therefore have been caused by the present
hasty glance. They might often have felt what, on this occasion, they
first acknowledged. There is nothing of this in the picture. When I
behold the ecstasy of those old men, I want to see the cause, and, as I
say, am exceedingly surprised to perceive nothing but a veiled,
muffled figure, at which they are staring with such devotion. What of
Helen is there? Her white veil and something of her outline, as far as
outline can be traced beneath drapery. But perhaps the Count did
not mean that her face should be covered. In that case, although his
words—“Hélène couverte d’un voile blanc”—hardly admit of such an
interpretation, another point excites my surprise. He recommends to
the artist great care in the expression of the old men’s faces, and
wastes not a word upon the beauty of Helen’s. This modest beauty,
approaching timidly, her eyes moist with repentant tears,—is, then,
the highest beauty so much a matter of course to our artists, that
they need not be reminded of it? or is expression more than beauty?
or is it with pictures as with the stage, where we are accustomed to
accept the ugliest of actresses for a ravishing princess, if her prince
only express the proper degree of passion for her.
 Truly this picture of Caylus would be to that of Zeuxis as
pantomime to the most sublime of poetry.
Homer was unquestionably more read formerly than now, yet we
do not find mention of many pictures drawn from him even by the
old artists.[143] They seem diligently to have availed themselves of any
individual physical beauties which he may have pointed out. They
painted these, well knowing that in this department alone they could
vie with the poet with any chance of success. Zeuxis painted besides
Helen a Penelope, and the Diana of Apelles was the goddess of
Homer attended by her nymphs.
I will take this opportunity of saying that the passage in Pliny
referring to this picture of Apelles needs correcting.[144] But to paint
scenes from Homer merely because they afforded a rich composition,
striking contrasts, and artistic shading, seems not to have been to the
taste of the old artists; nor could it be, so long as art kept within the
narrow limits of its own high calling. They fed upon the spirit of the
poet, and filled their imagination with his noblest traits. The fire of
his enthusiasm kindled theirs. They saw and felt with him. Thus their
works became copies of the Homeric, not in the relation of portrait to
original, but in the relation of a son to a father,—like, but different.
The whole resemblance often lies in a single trait, the other parts
being alike in nothing but in their harmony with that.
Since, moreover, the Homeric masterpieces of poetry were older
than any masterpiece of art, for Homer had observed nature with the
eye of an artist before either Phidias or Apelles, the artists naturally
found ready made in his poems many valuable observations, which
they had not yet had time to make for themselves. These they eagerly
seized upon, in order that, through Homer, they might copy nature.
Phidias acknowledged that the lines,[145]—
Ἦ καὶ κυανέῃσιν ἐπ’ ὀφρύσι νεῦσε Κρονίων·
ἀμβρόσιαι δ’ ἄρα χαῖται ἐπεῤῥώσαντο ἄνακτος
κρατὸς ἀπ’ ἀθανάτοιο· μέγαν δ’ ἐλέλιξεν Ὄλυμπον,

served him as the model of his Olympian Jupiter, and that only
through their help had he succeeded in making a godlike
countenance, “propemodum ex ipso cœlo petitum.” Whoever
understands by this merely that the imagination of the artist was
fired by the poet’s sublime picture, and thus made capable of equally
sublime representations, overlooks, I think, the chief point, and
contents himself with a general statement where something very
special and much more satisfactory is meant. Phidias here
acknowledges also, as I understand him, that this passage first led
him to notice how much expression lies in the eyebrows, “quanta
pars animi” is shown in them. Perhaps it further induced him to
bestow more attention upon the hair, in order to express in some
degree what Homer calls ambrosial curls. For it is certain that the old
artists before Phidias had very little idea of the language and
significance of the features, and particularly neglected the hair. Even
Myron was faulty in both these respects, as Pliny observes,[146] and,
according to the same authority, Pythagoras Leontinus was the first
who distinguished himself by the beauty of his hair. Other artists
learned from the works of Phidias what Phidias had learned from
Homer.
I will mention another example of the same kind which has always
given me particular pleasure. Hogarth passes the following criticism
on the Apollo Belvidere.[147] “These two masterpieces of art, the
Apollo and the Antinous, are seen together in the same palace at
Rome, where the Antinous fills the spectator with admiration only,
whilst the Apollo strikes him with surprise, and, as travellers express
themselves, with an appearance of something more than human,
which they of course are always at a loss to describe; and this effect,
they say, is the more astonishing, as, upon examination, its
disproportion is evident even to a common eye. One of the best
sculptors we have in England, who lately went to see them,
confirmed to me what has been now said, particularly as to the legs
and thighs being too long and too large for the upper parts. And
Andrea Sacchi, one of the great Italian painters, seems to have been
of the same opinion, or he would hardly have given his Apollo,
crowning Pasquilini the musician, the exact proportion of the
Antinous (in a famous picture of his now in England), as otherwise it
seems to be a direct copy from the Apollo.
“Although in very great works we often see an inferior part
neglected, yet here this cannot be the case, because in a fine statue,
just proportion is one of its essential beauties; therefore it stands to
reason, that these limbs must have been lengthened on purpose,
otherwise it might easily have been avoided.
 “So that if we examine the beauties of this figure thoroughly, we
may reasonably conclude, that what has been hitherto thought so
unaccountably excellent in its general appearance, hath been owing
to what hath seemed a blemish in a part of it.”
All this is very suggestive. Homer also, I would add, had already
felt and noticed the same thing,—that an appearance of nobility is
produced by a disproportionate size of the foot and thigh. For, when
Antenor is comparing the figure of Ulysses with that of Menelaus, he
says,[148]—
στάντων μὲν Μενέλαος ὑπείρεχεν εὐρέας ὤμους,
ἄμφω δ’ ἑζομένω, γεραρώτερος ἦεν Ὀδυσσεύς.

“When both were standing Menelaus overtopped him by his broad

shoulders; but when both were sitting, Ulysses was the more
majestic.” Since, when seated, Ulysses gained in dignity what
Menelaus lost, we can easily tell the proportion which the upper part
of the body in each bore to the feet and thighs. In Ulysses the upper
part was large in proportion to the lower: in Menelaus the size of the
lower parts was large in proportion to that of the upper.
 XXIII.

A single incongruous part may destroy the harmonious effect of

many beauties, without, however, making the object ugly. Ugliness
requires the presence of several incongruous parts which we must be
able to take in at a glance if the effect produced is to be the opposite
of that which we call beauty.
Accordingly ugliness in itself can be no subject for poetry. Yet
Homer has described its extreme in Thersites, and described it by its
coexistent parts. Why did he allow himself in the case of ugliness
what he wisely refrained from as regards beauty? Will not the effect
of ugliness be as much hindered by the successive enumeration of its
elements, as the effect of beauty is neutralized by a similar
treatment?
Certainly it will, and therein lies Homer’s justification. The poet
can make ugliness his theme only because it acquires through his
description a less repulsive aspect, and ceases in a measure to
produce the effect of ugliness. What he cannot employ by itself, he
uses as an ingredient to excite and strengthen certain mixed
impressions, with which he must entertain us in the absence of those
purely agreeable.
These mixed sensations are those of the ridiculous and the
horrible.
Homer makes Thersites ugly in order to make him ridiculous.
Mere ugliness, however, would not have this effect. Ugliness is
imperfection, and the ridiculous requires a contrast between
perfections and imperfections.[149] This is the explanation of my
friend, to which I would add that this contrast must not be too sharp
and decided, but that the opposites must be such as admit of being
blended into each other. All the ugliness of Thersites has not made
the wise and virtuous Æsop ridiculous. A silly, monkish conceit
sought to transfer to the writer the γέλοιον of his instructive fables by
representing his person as deformed. But a misshapen body and a
beautiful soul are like oil and vinegar, which, however much they
may be stirred together, will always remain distinct to the taste. They
give rise to no third. Each one produces its own effect,—the body
distaste, the soul delight. The two emotions blend into one only when
the misshapen body is at the same time frail and sickly, a hinderance
and source of injury to the mind. The result, however, is not laughter,
but compassion; and the object, which before we had simply
respected, now excites our interest. The frail, misshapen Pope must
have been more interesting to his friends than the strong, handsome
Wycherley.
But although Thersites is not ridiculous on account of his ugliness
alone, he would not be ridiculous without it. Many elements work
together to produce this result; the ugliness of his person
corresponding with that of his character, and both contrasting with
the idea he entertains of his own importance, together with the
harmlessness, except to himself, of his malicious tongue. The last
point is the οὐ φθαρτικόν (the undeadly), which Aristotle[150] takes to
be an indispensable element of the ridiculous. My friend also makes
it a necessary condition that the contrast should be unimportant, and
not interest us greatly. For, suppose that Thersites had had to pay
dearly for his spiteful detraction of Agamemnon, that it had cost him
his life instead of a couple of bloody wales, then we should cease to
laugh at him. To test the justice of this, let us read his death in
Quintus Calaber.[151] Achilles regrets having slain Penthesilea. Her
noble blood, so bravely shed, claims the hero’s respect and
compassion, feelings which soon grow into love. The slanderous
Thersites turns this love into a crime. He inveighs against the
sensuality which betrays even the bravest of men into follies:
ἥτ’ ἄφρονα φῶτα τίθησι
καὶ πινυτόν περ ἐόντα.

Achilles’ wrath is kindled. Without a word he deals him such a blow

between cheek and ear that teeth, blood, and life gush from the
wound. This is too barbarous. The angry, murderous Achilles
becomes more an object of hate to me than the tricky, snarling
Thersites. The shout of delight raised by the Greeks at the deed
offends me. My sympathies are with Diomedes, whose sword is
drawn on the instant to take vengeance on the murderer of his
kinsman. For Thersites as a man is of my kin also.
But suppose that the attempts of Thersites had resulted in open
mutiny; that the rebellious people had actually taken to the ships,
and treacherously abandoned their commanders, who thereupon had
fallen into the hands of a vindictive enemy; and that the judgment of
the gods had decreed total destruction to fleet and nation: how
should we then view the ugliness of Thersites? Although harmless
ugliness may be ridiculous, hurtful ugliness is always horrible.
I cannot better illustrate this than by a couple of admirable
passages from Shakespeare. Edmund, bastard son of the Earl of
Gloucester in King Lear, is no less a villain than Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, who, by the most hideous crimes, paved his way to the
throne, which he ascended under the title of Richard the Third. Why
does he excite in us far less disgust and horror? When the bastard
says,[152]—
Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound; wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true
As honest Madam’s issue? why brand they thus
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality,
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to creating a whole tribe of fops
Got ’tween asleep and wake?

I hear a devil speaking, but in the form of an angel of light.

When, on the contrary, the Earl of Gloucester says,[153]—
But I,—that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamped, and want love’s majesty;
To strut before a wanton, ambling nymph;
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
 Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionably,
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time;
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun,
And descant on mine own deformity;
And, therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair, well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain.

I hear a devil and see a devil, in a shape which only the devil should
wear.
 XXIV.

Such is the use which the poet makes of ugliness of form. How can
the painter legitimately employ it?
Painting as imitative skill can express ugliness; painting as a fine
art will not express it. In the former capacity its sphere extends over
all visible objects; in the latter it confines itself to those which
produce agreeable impressions.
But do not disagreeable impressions please in the imitation? Not
all. An acute critic has already remarked this in respect of disgust.[154]
“Representations of fear,” he says, “of sadness, horror, compassion,
&c., arouse painful emotions only in so far as we believe the evil to be
actual. The consideration that it is but an illusion of art may resolve
these disagreeable sensations into those of pleasure. But, according
to the laws of imagination, the disagreeable sensation of disgust
arises from the mere representation in the mind, whether the object
be thought actually to exist or not. No matter how apparent the art of
the imitation, our wounded sensibilities are not relieved. Our
discomfort arose not from the belief that the evil was actual, but from
the mere representation which is actually present. The feeling of
disgust, therefore, comes always from nature, never from imitation.”
The same criticism is applicable to physical ugliness. This also
wounds our sight, offends our taste for order and harmony, and
excites aversion without regard to the actual existence of the object
in which we perceive it. We wish to see neither Thersites himself nor
his image. If his image be the less displeasing, the reason is not that
ugliness of shape ceases to be ugly in the imitation, but that we
possess the power of diverting our minds from this ugliness by
admiration of the artist’s skill. But this satisfaction is constantly
disturbed by the thought of the unworthy use to which art has been
put, and our esteem for the artist is thereby greatly diminished.
 Aristotle adduces another reason[155] for the pleasure we take in
even the most faithful copy of what in nature is disagreeable. He
attributes this pleasure to man’s universal desire for knowledge. We
are pleased when we can learn from a copy τί ἕκαστον, what each
and every thing is, or when we can conclude from it ὅτι οὗτος
ἐκεῖνος, that it is the very thing we already know. But this is no
argument in favor of the imitation of ugliness. The pleasure which
arises from the gratification of our desire for knowledge is
momentary and only incidental to the object with regard to which it
has been satisfied, whereas the discomfort which accompanies the
sight of ugliness is permanent, and essential to the object causing it.
How, then, can one counterbalance the other? Still less can the
trifling entertainment of tracing a likeness overcome the unpleasant
impression produced by ugliness. The more closely I compare the
ugly copy with the ugly original, the more I expose myself to this
influence, so that the pleasure of the comparison soon disappears,
leaving nothing behind but the painful impression of this twofold
ugliness.
From the examples given by Aristotle he appears not to include
ugliness of form among the disagreeable things which may give
pleasure in the imitation. His examples are wild beasts and dead
bodies. Wild beasts excite terror even when they are not ugly; and
this terror, not their ugliness, may be made to produce sensations of
pleasure through imitation. So also of dead bodies. Keenness of
sympathy, the dreadful thought of our own annihilation, make a
dead body in nature an object of aversion. In the imitation the sense
of illusion robs sympathy of its sharpness, and, by the addition of
various palliating circumstances, that disturbing element may be
either entirely banished or so inseparably interwoven with these
softening features, that terror is almost lost in desire.
Since, then, ugliness of form, from its exciting sensations of pain of
a kind incapable of being converted by imitation into pleasurable
emotions, cannot in itself be a fitting subject for painting as a fine
art, the question arises whether it may not be employed in painting
as in poetry as an ingredient for strengthening other sensations.
May painting make use of deformity in the attainment of the
ridiculous and horrible?
 I will not venture to answer this question absolutely in the
negative. Unquestionably, harmless ugliness can be ridiculous in
painting also, especially when united with an affectation of grace and
dignity. Equally beyond question is it that hurtful ugliness excites
terror in a picture as well as in nature, and that the ridiculous and
the terrible, in themselves mixed sensations, acquire through
imitation an added degree of fascination.
But I must call attention to the fact that painting and poetry do not
stand upon the same footing in this respect. In poetry, as I have
observed, ugliness of form loses its disagreeable effect almost
entirely by the successive enumeration of its coexistent parts. As far
as effect is concerned it almost ceases to be ugliness, and can thus
more closely combine with other appearances to produce new and
different impressions. But in painting ugliness is before our eyes in
all its strength, and affects us scarcely less powerfully than in nature
itself. Harmless ugliness cannot, therefore, long remain ridiculous.
The disagreeable impression gains the mastery, and what was at first
amusing becomes at last repulsive. Nor is the case different with
hurtful ugliness. The element of terror gradually disappears, leaving
the deformity unchanging and unrelieved.
Count Caylus was therefore right in omitting the episode of
Thersites from his series of Homeric pictures. But are we justified in
wishing it out of Homer? I perceive with regret that this is done by
one critic whose taste is otherwise unerring.[156] I postpone further
discussion of the subject to a future occasion.
 XXV.

The second distinction mentioned by the critic just quoted,

between disgust and other disagreeable emotions, appears in the
distaste which deformity excites in us.
“Other disagreeable passions,” he says,[157] “may sometimes, in
nature as well as in art, produce gratification, because they never
arouse pure pain. Their bitterness is always mixed with satisfaction.
Our fear is seldom devoid of hope; terror rouses all our powers to
escape the danger; anger is mixed with a desire for vengeance;
sadness, with the pleasant recollection of former happiness; and
compassion is inseparable from the tender sentiments of love and
good-will. The mind is at liberty to dwell now on the agreeable, and
now on the disagreeable side, and thus to obtain a mingling of
pleasure and pain, more delightful than the purest pleasure. Very
little study of ourselves will furnish us with abundant instances. Why
else is his anger dearer to an angry man and his sadness to a
melancholy one, than all the cheerful images by which we strive to
soothe him? Quite different is the case with disgust and its kindred
sensations. Here the mind is conscious of no perceptible admixture
of pleasure. A feeling of uneasiness gains the mastery, and under no
imaginable conditions in nature or art would the mind fail to recoil
with aversion from representations of this nature.”
Very true; but, since the critic acknowledges the existence of other
sensations nearly akin to that of disgust, and producing, like that,
nothing but pain, what answers more nearly to this description than
emotions excited by the sight of physical deformity? These are not
only kindred to that of disgust, but they resemble it in being destitute
of all admixture of pleasure in art as well as in nature. Under no
imaginable conditions, therefore, would the mind fail to recoil with
aversion from such representations.
 This aversion, if I have analyzed my feelings with sufficient care, is
altogether of the nature of disgust. The sensation which accompanies
the sight of physical deformity is disgust, though a low degree of it.
This, indeed, is at variance with another remark of our critic,
according to which only our more occult senses—those of taste,
smell, and touch—are capable of receiving impressions of disgust.
“The first two,” he says, “from an excessive sweetness, and the latter
from an extreme softness of bodies which offer too slight resistance
to the fibres coming in contact with them. Such objects, then,
become intolerable to the sight, but solely through the association of
ideas, because we remember how disagreeable they were to our sense
of taste, smell, or touch. For, strictly speaking, there are no objects of
disgust to the eyes.” I think, however, that some might be mentioned.
A mole on the face, a hare-lip, a flattened nose with prominent
nostrils, are deformities which offend neither taste, smell, nor touch.
Yet the sight of them excites in us something much more nearly
resembling disgust than we feel at sight of other malformations, such
as a club-foot or a hump on the back. The more susceptible the
temperament, the more distinctly are we conscious, when looking at
such objects, of those motions in the body which precede nausea.
That these motions soon subside, and rarely if ever result in actual
sickness, is to be explained by the fact that the eye receives in and
with the objects causing them such a number of pleasing images that
the disagreeable impressions are too much weakened and obscured
to exert any marked influence on the body. The more occult senses of
taste, smell, and touch, on the contrary, cannot receive other
impressions when in contact with the repulsive object. The element
of disgust operates in full force, and necessarily produces much more
violent effects upon the body.
The same rules hold of things loathsome as of things ugly, in
respect of imitation. Indeed, since the disagreeable effect of the
former is the more violent, they are still less suitable subjects of
painting or poetry. Only because the effect is softened by verbal
expression, did I venture to assert that the poet might employ certain
loathsome traits as an ingredient in such mixed sensations as can
with good effect be strengthened by the use of ugliness.
The ridiculous may be heightened by an element of disgust;
representations of dignity and propriety likewise become ludicrous
when brought into contrast with the disgusting. Examples of this
abound in Aristophanes. I am reminded of the weasel that
interrupted the worthy Socrates in his astronomical observations.[158]
ΜΑΘ. πρώην δέ γε γνώμην μεγάλην ἀφῃρέθη
ὑπ’ ἀσκαλαβώτου. ΣΤΡ. τίνα τρόπον; κάτειπέ μοι.
ΜΑΘ. ζητοῦντος αὐτοῦ τῆς σελήνης τὰς ὁδοὺς
καὶ τὰς περιφοράς, εἶτ’ ἄνω κεχηνότος
ἀπὸ τῆς ὀροφῆς νύκτωρ γαλεώτης κατέχεσεν.
ΣΤΡ. ἥσθην γαλεώτῃ καταχέσαντι Σωκράτους.

If what fell into the open mouth had not been disgusting, there
would be nothing ludicrous in the story.
An amusing instance of this occurs in the Hottentot story of
Tquassouw and Knonmquaiha, attributed to Lord Chesterfield,
which appeared in the “Connoisseur,” an English weekly, full of wit
and humor. The filthiness of the Hottentots is well known, as also the
fact of their regarding as beautiful and holy what excites our disgust
and aversion. The pressed gristle of a nose, flaccid breasts
descending to the navel, the whole body anointed with a varnish of
goat’s fat and soot, melted in by the sun, hair dripping with grease,
arms and legs entwined with fresh entrails,—imagine all this the
object of an ardent, respectful, tender love; listen to expressions of
this love in the noble language of sincerity and admiration, and keep
from laughing if you can.[159]
The disgusting seems to admit of being still more closely united
with the terrible. What we call the horrible is nothing more than a
mixture of the elements of terror and disgust. Longinus[160] takes
offence at the “Τῆς ἐκ μὲν ῥινῶν μύξαι ῥέον (mucus flowing from
the nostrils) in Hesiod’s picture of Sorrow;[161] but not, I think, so
much on account of the loathsomeness of the trait, as from its being
simply loathsome with no element of terror. For he does not seem
inclined to find fault with the μακροὶ δ’ ὄνυχες χείρεσσιν ὑπῆσαν,
the long nails projecting beyond the fingers. Long nails are not less
disgusting than a running nose, but they are at the same time
terrible. It is they that tear the cheeks till the blood runs to the
ground:
... ἐκ δὲ παρειῶν
αἶμ’ ἀπελείβετ’ ἔραζε....
The other feature is simply disgusting, and I should advise Sorrow to
cease her crying.
Read Sophocles’ description of the desert cave of his wretched
Philoctetes. There are no provisions to be seen, no comforts beyond a
trampled litter of dried leaves, an unshapely wooden bowl, and a
tinder-box. These constitute the whole wealth of the sick, forsaken
man. How does the poet complete the sad and frightful picture? By
introducing the element of disgust. “Ha!” Neoptolemus draws back
of a sudden, “here are rags drying full of blood and matter.”[162]
NE. ὁρώ κενὴν οἴκησιν ἀνθρώπων δίχα.

ΟΔ. οὐδ’ ἔνδον οἰκοποιός ἐστί τις τροφή;

ΝΕ. στείπτή γε φυλλὰς ὡς ἐναυλίζοντί τῳ.

OΔ. τὰ δ’ ἄλλ’ ἔρημα, κοὔδέν ἐσθ’ ὑπόστεγον;

ΝΕ. αὐτόξυλόν γ’ ἔκπωμα φαυλουργοῦ τινὸς

τεχνήματ’ ἀνδρὸς, καὶ πυρεῖ’ ὁμοῦ τάδε.

OΔ. κείνου τὸ θησαύρισμα σημαίνεις τόδε.

ΝΕ. ἰοὺ, ἰού· καὶ ταῦτά γ’ ἄλλα θάλπεται

ῥάκη, βαρείας του νοσηλείας πλέα.

So in Homer, Hector dragged on the ground, his face foul with

dust, his hair matted with blood,
Squalentem barbam et concretos sanguine crines,

(as Virgil expresses it[163]) is a disgusting object, but all the more
terrible and touching.
Who can recall the punishment of Marsyas, in Ovid, without a
feeling of disgust?[164]
Clamanti cutis est summos direpta per artus:
Nec quidquam, nisi vulnus erat; cruor undique manat:
Detectique patent nervi: trepidæque sine ulla
Pelle micant venæ: salientia viscera possis,
Et perlucentes numerare in pectore fibras.