Contempt: Derogating Others While Keeping Calm

Does Contempt Have Distinctive Referent Terms?

Like it or not, much research on emotion uses verbal measures. Indeed, many theories of specific emotions base their categories on the available, distinct words in the language they use (for critiques see Barrett, 2006; Wierzbicka, 1999). However, lay-language terminology is still an important facet of a multicomponent view of emotion. In addition, whether an emotion is seen as psychologically basic often depends on whether it is semantically basic (see Ortony & Turner, 1990, for an analysis of the concept of basic emotions). Thus, one aspect of judging contempt’s distinctiveness is to find whether it forms a distinctive category across languages.

Starting with English, a problem arises. Although “contempt” and its synonyms (“scorn,” “disdain,” or “aversion”) are often classified as emotion words, English speakers do not readily use them. Fehr and Russell (1984) found that respondents mentioned the word “contempt” only twice when asked to list as many emotion words as they could in a minute (“anger” was listed 149 times, and “disgust” 27 times). In addition, no participant in a study of emotion words in six European languages by van Goozen and Frijda (1993) spontaneously mentioned contempt or its synonyms in a free-listing task, though such words existed in all six languages. Going beyond Indo-European languages, distinct “contempt” words appear much less frequently across languages than, for example, words for anger and sadness (e.g., Hupka, Lenton, & Hutchison, 1999; Shaver, Murdaya, & Fraley, 2001).

A cluster analysis of the English emotion lexicon based on a sorting task (Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & O’Connor, 1987; see also Storm & Storm, 1987) found that “contempt” clustered together with disgust, but “scorn”—often seen as a synonym for “contempt”—fell in with “anger.” However, Jameson (1996), replicating the sorting task with the same words but a slight difference in methodology, found “contempt” to cluster with “anger” and “scorn” to cluster with “hate.” Scherer, Shuman, Fontaine, and Soriano (2013) sorted numerous emotion terms on the basis of two appraisal-related dimensions: valence (or goal conduciveness) and potency (or control). This placed contempt in the same quadrant as disgust, anger, and hostility. In short, contempt and its synonyms often cluster together with hate or disgust, and on a more abstract level, also with anger.

Thus, even in languages in which “contempt” has a distinct word, speakers do not often use it. Still, the scarcity of its referent term does not mean that contempt cannot have distinct causes, characteristics, and implications; only that people find it hard to agree on how to talk about them.

Does Contempt Have Distinctive Eliciting Situations?

Research sometimes identifies contempt as a reaction to a moral transgression. Rozin, Lowery, Imada, and Haidt (1999), proposed that contempt, anger, and disgust are elicited in reaction to violations of three distinct ethics (the CAD triad hypothesis; cf. Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997). Anger is elicited when individual rights (autonomy) are violated, disgust when purity or sanctity (divinity) is violated, and contempt when social hierarchy or duty (community) is violated. More specifically, contempt in this scheme responds to being disloyal, disobedient, or disrespectful, or breaking the rules of a community. These authors found support for their proposed correspondences among U.S. and Japanese participants, using verbal as well as facial-expression identification measures of emotion.

However, various studies beyond this first test of the CAD hypothesis (Hutcherson & Gross, 2011; P. S. Russell, Piazza, & Giner-Sorolla, 2012) have not found the one-to-one association proposed. Apparently, contempt appears not just in reaction to community violations (e.g., social obligations, duties, social hierarchy, loyalty), but also to autonomy violations (e.g., offenses against individual freedom, fairness, justice, etc.). Such events evoke a mixture of negative feelings, such as anger, moral disgust, and contempt (see e.g., Hutcherson & Gross, 2011; Marzillier & Davey, 2004; Simpson, Carter, Anthony, & Overton, 2006). Fischer and Roseman (2007) also found that when participants were asked to recall a personal contempt event, it was almost always one in which they had also felt a great deal of anger. Thus, the unique characteristic of contempt does not clearly lie in the type of events that provoke it.

Does Contempt Have Distinctive Appraisals and Action Tendencies?

Perhaps the distinctive feature of contempt is not which objective situations set it off, but how the situation is judged. Anger and contempt, for example, have both similar and dissimilar appraisal components, and this explains why similar events or social groups are capable of eliciting either emotion, given slight changes to the individual’s appraisal (cf. Frijda, 1986). Both emotions involve blaming another for intentional, unfair wrongdoing. But contempt also involves the appraisal that the other is inferior, maybe not even worth one’s energy or attention, because he or she has a bad character (Fischer & Roseman, 2007). In the case of anger, we blame the other for doing wrong and blocking our goals. However, in contempt we despise the other as stupid, incompetent, or immoral (see also Hutcherson & Gross, 2011)—deriding their disposition more so than their act.

This different appraisal pattern accompanies a larger feeling of control in anger than in contempt. We may think we can change the ones we are angry at, whereas we have given up this hope for those we hold in contempt. The dispositional nature of contempt is illustrated in the following quote from Alberto Moravia’s book Contempt (1954/1999), describing a marriage falling apart: “But why do you despise me?” (the husband asks) “Because I do,” she cried all at once; “because you’re made like that, and however hard you try, you can’t change yourself” (p. 219).

Appraisals of the other’s inferiority and of lack of control also carry distinct motivational tendencies. Roseman (2001) referred to contempt as belonging to the “exclusion” family of emotions, in contrast with the “attack” family, to which anger belongs. Fischer and Roseman (2007) indeed found that in contempt more often than anger, respondents ignored the other person, gossiped about the other, and excluded him or her socially. Anger, on the other hand, was characterized by antagonistic approach: criticizing, giving negative feedback, explicitly expressing anger, and so on. A difference was also found in behaviors after a few days. Participants reported reconciling more with the target of their anger (approach tendency) than with the target of their contempt.

In line with these appraisals and action tendencies, the “emotivational” goal of contempt (Roseman, Wiest, & Swartz, 1994) is to exclude the transgressor, unlike the characteristic goal of anger, which is confrontational. By showing contempt, the target is removed from consideration. Ending social relations is the ultimate criticism of another’s character or actions. Research on marriage relationships by Gottman and Levenson (2002), for example, has shown that contempt by one partner (or both) for the other is the best predictor of divorce. This finding is not surprising given the emotivational goal of exclusion.

Similar exclusion tendencies are found in research on contempt within intergroup relations. Extending a model of collective action (van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, & Leach, 2004) to nonnormative, that is, violent or illegal, actions, Tausch et al. (2011) examined support for various acts by students, Indian Muslims, and British Muslims. They found that whereas normative actions, such as petitions and protests, were often driven by anger, nonnormative actions were driven by a sense of low efficacy, and were better predicted by contempt (see also Becker, Tausch, & Wagner, 2011).

Does Contempt Have Distinctive Nonverbal Expressions?

Another feature relevant to the basic status of an emotion is whether it has a unique, universal facial expression. Ekman and his colleagues (Ekman & Friesen, 1986; Ekman & Heider, 1988; Matsumoto, 1992, 2005; Matsumoto & Ekman, 1989) identified a facial expression of contempt: the tightening and raising of one lip corner, or “unilateral lip curl” (see Figure 1 in Wagner, 2000). In this research, respondents from different cultures accurately decoded this facial display as contempt (see also Biehl et al., 1997; Ekman & Heider, 1988). However, other studies, using different photos, different labels, and different tasks did not replicate these findings (e.g., Haidt & Keltner, 1999; Izard, 1971; J. A. Russell, 1991; Wagner, 2000). For example, Haidt and Keltner (1999), comparing American and Indian recognition rates of various emotions, found that only 35% of the Americans correctly labeled the contempt expression as contempt (and 55% as disgust). At the same time, 62.5% of the Indian respondents labeled the expression correctly.

Several methodological problems have been proposed to explain the inconsistent recognition rates of the contempt display (Ekman & Friesen, 1988). For example, some studies have found that the number of correct responses is higher in a forced-choice format than in a free-response one (e.g., Widen, Christy, Hewett, & Russell, 2011), though others did not find this difference (e.g., Haidt & Keltner, 1999). A related critique is the absence of a “none-of-these” response. For example, Wagner (2000) showed that the lack of such a response option results in a high percentage of observers (70.4%) incorrectly choosing contempt for a neutral face. This may not only point to a methodological problem but also to the close association between contempt and a pose of indifference, to which we will return later.

Finally, recall that the word “contempt” is not used frequently in the English language. Thus, the problem with labeling contempt faces may not lie in the recognition of the expression, but in the availability of a label. Indeed, Matsumoto and Ekman (2004) found that contempt expressions could reliably be matched to situations that would elicit contempt, such as “The person hears an acquaintance bragging about accomplishing something for which the acquaintance was not responsible.”

In addition to facial displays, several attempts have been made to study other emotion expressions, such as nonlinguistic vocalizations of affect (e.g., laughter, screaming) or speech-embedded affective prosody (e.g., emotional tone of voice; Banse & Scherer, 1996; Hawk, van Kleef, Fischer, & van der Schalk, 2009; Juslin & Laukka, 2003; Schröder, 2003). Contempt’s spontaneous vocalizations include a snort, a tongue click, a sigh, a ts-ts, or huh-huh (see Hawk et al., 2009). Hawk and colleagues showed that affect vocalizations of contempt are much better recognized than facial displays or speech-embedded prosody, in contrast with other emotions that show equal recognition from facial and vocal affective expressions. Even so, across the three different channels studied, contempt was always the least recognized emotion, often confused with disgust or with the “none of these” label, although recognition was still above chance level. As with facial expressions, it may be the rarity of the term “contempt” that impedes verbal labeling.

Is Contempt Physiologically and Neurologically Distinctive?

A few studies have shown that the processing of contempt faces is accompanied by activation of the amygdala, in particular in socially anxious individuals (Stein, Simmons, Feinstein, & Paulus, 2007), and in comparison with neutral faces (Sambataro et al., 2006). However, these findings are primarily informative about responses to contempt, and thus they cannot be regarded as evidence regarding neural responses when actually feeling contempt. In addition, activation of the amygdala occurs in reaction to a variety of emotional or motivational stimuli, and does not tell us much about the distinct neural pattern of contempt. No further studies on physiological characteristics of contempt have been conducted.

At first sight, this may appear to support the notion that “contempt is a relatively cool emotion” (Izard, 1992, p. 272). However, we do not know whether the absence of published work on bodily indicators is due to a lack of studies or a lack of findings. Maybe the apparent “coolness” of contempt reflects action tendencies to detach from the other and to show one’s own superior status. The nature of its outward display and inward feelings, sometimes described as more subtle and less intense than that of other emotions, may in fact be a means to regulate one’s anger or even fear, and to display a dismissive attitude to the target (Fischer, 2011). We will return to this point later.

A General Model of Contempt

To summarize the general conclusions of the preceding sections, we will illustrate a dynamic social model of contempt and anger in comparison, ² including three possible paths to contempt (Figure 1). The model can apply to both individual and collective targets. In this model, eliciting information is on the far left, appraisals on the basis of that information are on the left, emotions to the right, and action responses on the far right. We have distinguished between the emotion and sentiment of contempt in the model by the different pathways and elicitors (transgression and low status and reputation). As argued earlier, to date we do not have evidence that the emotion and sentiment are really defined by different appraisals or action tendencies.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Dynamic social model of the different pathways leading to contempt and anger.

To start at the top left, a single transgression is likely to lead to the appraisal of unfairness in the action, which leads to anger and confrontational action tendencies. However, if the transgression is seen as characteristic or habitual (indicated by its repetition downwards), this will more likely produce an additional appraisal that the person or group has dispositionally low social value, which will lead to contempt. Another path to (the sentiment of) contempt goes more directly, through the transmission of beliefs about the target’s low social value by way of its status or reputation. Finally, on the right, if the confrontational actions arising from anger are experienced to be ineffective in changing the target’s ways, an angry feeling may be turned back into contempt.

The Associative Function

This function assumes that we can respond quickly to emotional stimuli, because emotions help us to learn fast associations between stimuli and emotions. In addition, emotions become associated with important belief systems such as anger in response to unfair events, or disgust in response to violating hygiene norms. In the case of contempt, we assume that it can create enduring associations between certain low status groups and contempt, as we have seen. Indeed, Bell (2013) referred to contempt as a globalist emotion, in that it can take a whole person or group as its object without the actual occurrence of an event or act. As associations and sentiments become more accessible they help individuals to orient quickly to a potentially socially threatening environment, similar to the function of highly accessible attitudes (Fazio & Olson, 2014). An emotional reaction that becomes accessible without introspection or modification can also provide stability for a value system; like a terminal value, it is a truism beyond argument (Maio & Olson, 1998). On the group level, emotional sentiments that function as rigid associations may have a number of additional functions that strengthen the group and fulfill individual needs in a situation of conflict; for example, reinforcing moral certainty, or maintaining a sense of superiority (Bar-Tal & Halperin, 2011; see also Tajfel & Turner, 1979).

This function applies not only between but also within societies. Contempt works to preserve social hierarchies, as long as the group receiving contempt accepts its socially inferior position. Research we presented earlier on the stereotype content model suggests that some combination of distrust and perceived low competence is most likely to elicit contempt and related emotions from other groups. Many of the groups so perceived are people with a low perceived social value, such as the homeless or drug addicts. The associated actions of avoidance, and cognitions of dehumanization (e.g., Harris & Fiske, 2006), work to further keep them in a subordinate place. Feelings of contempt thus may assure individuals of their standing in a hierarchical social reality (Brandt & Reyna, 2011).

The Self-Regulation Function

A second function of contempt at the individual level may be self-regulation (Giner-Sorolla, 2012). As argued by self-regulatory theories (e.g., Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, & Zhang, 2007; Carver & Scheier, 1990), emotions give evaluative feedback on actions, helping people learn from outcomes. Contempt triggers people’s efforts to distance themselves from a person they have been angry at and whom they start to devalue. The development of contempt may thus help to regulate anger or hate, and help the individual by “cooling down” those more effortful and dangerous emotions (see also Fischer & Manstead, 2008). This process has affinities with emotion regulation strategies that strive for calmness and composure (Erber, Wegner, & Therriault, 1996; Koole, 2009). If contempt often serves to regulate anger, this may also explain why the two emotions have been linked together in theory and data. ³

Research, including two comprehensive meta-analyses (Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010; Webb, Miles, & Sheeran, 2012), has identified a number of strategies that people might use to down-regulate unpleasant emotions including anger. “Choosing” contempt instead of anger matches the strategy of reappraisal. The key reappraisal transforming anger to contempt would be “This person is not capable or deserving of change; I do not need to get concerned.” However, an “emotional” perspective on emotion regulation (Mesquita & Frijda, 2011) would even better fit this idea that contempt replaces anger, because contempt and anger are both elicited as a response to the same event, but to multiple concerns. Anger is elicited because one’s goal is blocked by another person and one wants this person to stop it, but contempt is elicited because this person is not sensitive to one’s anger, and thus other action is required. Depending on the salience of one’s specific goals in a social situation, one may express one emotion at the expense of another.

We speculate that contempt might also be used to regulate unrequited love and other forms of social rejection. One somewhat arcane literary example comes from Ariosto’s chivalric epic Orlando Furioso (1532/1968). Here, the paladin Rinaldo is rid of his unrequited love, which appears allegorically as a monster, by the intervention of a mysterious knight called “Sdegno,” or in the archaic Italian of the poem, “Disdain.” More scientifically, Baumeister, Wotman, and Stillwell (1993) offered a content analysis of the experience of unrequited love in which 25% of the rejected reported harboring negative feelings for the object of their love. Contempt may very well be one of these.

Feelings and sentiments of contempt may have another effect that serves self-regulatory efforts, namely to boost feelings of self-worth and pride. If contempt usually involves devaluing another, then it should by comparison boost the self-image. Indeed, expressing contempt has been shown to increase the expresser’s externally perceived standing. In student settings, for example, those who displayed contempt were judged to be of higher status (Keltner, Young, Heerey, Oemig, & Monarch, 1998). It may be that this increased self-esteem is not only in the eye of the perceiver, but also in the eye of the contemptuous person. Direct proof of this idea, however, remains elusive.

The Social Distancing Function

Contempt can also be seen as motivating behavior in reaction to the appraisal that an undesirable inferior is too close. This in turn triggers efforts to reestablish the desired distance, whether by distancing oneself or making contemptuous expressions to drive the other away. The distancing function, in order to work, needs two parts: the person who creates the distance needs to communicate contempt; and the person receiving the signal needs to respond appropriately by withdrawing (if they agree that the relationship is not worth maintaining).

At the interpersonal relationship level, contempt creates social distance by defending the individual’s interests. It reinforces social boundaries when another person shows signs of a bad character, incompetence, or lower social status (see also Fischer & Manstead, 2008). Although these traits can also give rise to anger or pity, we think that contempt distinguishes itself from interpersonal anger by a focus on rejection rather than change, and from pity by absence of compassion. This function is clearly evident in the studies of marital couples by Gottman (Gottman, 1998; Gottman & Levenson, 2002), who reported that couples headed for divorce were high on four behaviors, labeled the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” namely criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling (that is, listener withdrawal).

Social distancing has been studied in the development of interpersonal conflicts, especially in research on social exclusion (see also Williams, 2001). This body of research finds that frequent exposure to social exclusion leads to diminished self-esteem and impaired self-regulation (Baumeister, De Wall, Ciarocco, & Twenge, 2005). More indirect evidence can be found in Gerber and Wheelerʼs (2009) meta-analysis of 88 experimental studies on the effects of exclusion. They also show that social exclusion leads to greater negative mood, and to reciprocal signaling from the excluded person that they are inept and hopeless. This supports our point that the functionality of contemptuous distancing can work both ways. ⁴

On the intragroup level, however, research in the workplace shows that while contempt expressions indeed have a negative influence on interpersonal relations, they can also spur improvement of the quality of task performance (Melwani & Barsade, 2011). That is, recipients of contempt tend to feel the need to prove it wrong by improving their performance. However, the continued existence of hard feelings indicates that such efforts do not negate the essential distancing function of contempt; they merely try to restore the appearance of competence within the newly adversarial relationship. The circumstances under which contempt spurs self-improvement versus acquiescence, however, have not been much studied in other contexts.

Does Contempt Violate Equality?

Contempt has been deployed throughout history to support social orders that contemporary morality sees as unjust. For example, Herzog (1998) describes contempt, in 19th-century British political writings, as targeted at those who assert that an “inferior” race, sex, or social class has rights. Indeed, as we have seen, contempt involves an appraisal of low value, and a sense of looking down. Such a subjective lowering of the other seems incompatible with an egalitarian morality.

But looking down the social ladder is not required to feel contempt. Contempt can also be felt toward the powerful, for example in a protest (Tausch et al., 2011). Miller (1997) remarks on “upwards contempt,” directed at leaders. Similar phenomena have also received some attention from organizational scholars (Dean, Brandes, & Dharwadkar, 1998; Pelzer, 2005). In these cases, contempt depends on other schemes of ranking besides social status; high-status people seen as low in competence, for example. But contempt can also be felt on moral grounds; for example, when a failed bank’s managers receive an outrageous bonus, the wrongdoers can be seen as low regardless of social status. Indeed, research on social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), and system justification theory (Jost et al., 2004) tells us that members of a low-ranking group might salvage their self-esteem by considering themselves superior to higher ranking groups on a moral or competence criterion.

Does Contempt Violate Humility?

If, as we have argued, contempt involves a feeling of superiority to another person, the worry is that people may express and feel contempt as much to boost their self-esteem as to reproach immorality. As far as we can tell, no empirical evidence in psychology confirms Hume’s (1739/2007) observation that contempt can raise self-esteem more so than other forms of condemnation. Nonetheless, it is plausible that contempt more so than anger or hate risks hypocrisy by enticing our less-than-perfect selves to feel socially or morally superior.

Bell (2005, 2013) defended the self-enhancing nature of contempt when a justly contemptible action has threatened someone’s self-worth; for example, a woman’s contempt at a sexist joke. Contempt, in other words, is justified when it reacts against a claim of superiority over one’s own self or group. In such a case, contempt’s self-affirmation is not a violation of humility, but an attempt to repair the threat to one’s collective social value. This also means that contempt is most acceptable when it comes from someone who was personally threatened by the offense. In the case of the sexist joke, a woman might be justified in defending her gender with a show of contempt, but a man treating the joke with contempt risks getting caught up in self-congratulation rather than the humility appropriate to such an intervention.

Does Contempt Violate Fairness?

Kant’s main objection to contempt was that it rejects the whole person, who deserves essential respect even if we disapprove of his or her misdeeds (Kant, 1797/1998). We might think likewise that contempt is less fair than anger because, as psychological research shows (Fischer & Roseman, 2007; Hutcherson & Gross, 2011), it focuses on the dispositional qualities of a person instead of on a specific act. However, Thomason (2013) argues that Kant, elsewhere in his writings, speaks of contempt as a justified reaction to immorality or arrogance. Likewise, Abramson (2009) and Bell (2013) argue that a character-centered emotion does not necessarily condemn the whole person but can instead reject an objectionable part of a person’s character. For example, even though someone admired John McCain for his commitment to campaign finance reform, he or she could feel contempt for other positions he expressed during his 2008 presidential campaign, which contradicted his apparent concern for equality and democracy in the USA.

A parallel might be drawn between the other-focused emotion of contempt and the self-focused emotion of shame, which shows itself as most functional when it condemns an important aspect of one’s own character, not when it condemns the whole self (Gausel, Leach, Vignoles, & Brown, 2012). Empirical research to date, however, does not clarify whether people who feel contempt typically do focus on only the bad parts of the target’s character, instead of making whole-person judgments. To conclude, it seems that contempt can be applied fairly, but only to specific aspects of a person’s being that it is within their power to change.

Does Contempt Violate Our Duty to Act?

Because of the link between contempt and withdrawal or social exclusion, some authors have seen contempt as less preferable than, for example, anger, because it encourages passive rather than active responses to moral wrongs (Haidt, 2003; Hill, 2000). Contempt’s defenders answer that the emotion’s expressive qualities constitute moral action, a protest communicated to the offending party and to others (Abramson, 2009; Bell, 2013; Mason, 2003). That said, the literature on emotion and collective action suggests another path for contempt. In three surveys examining protests in Germany, the UK, and India, Tausch et al. (2011) showed that anger is related to normative actions, such as participating in discussions or signing petitions, whereas contempt predicts nonnormative more radical actions, such as throwing stones, attacking the police, or arson attacks (Becker et al., 2011; Tausch et al., 2011). These actions, far from passive, can be understood as fundamental disagreement with the character of a society, not just with a specific action or policy.

In situations where further social relations with a wrongdoer are inconceivable, contempt may also be fully justifiable. It is hardly ethical to require a woman to argue angrily with her rapist in an attempt to make him change his mind, or require members of an oppressed group to spend their whole day contesting every slight from the majority. In this situation, contempt provides a rebuke whose distancing nature is appropriate to the moral goal.