In their fascinating article, Gervais & Fessler (G&F) draw a distinction between emotions and sentiments and argue that contempt is better understood as a sentiment. G&F's distinction parallels a longstanding distinction in the philosophy of emotion between emotions (e.g., “being afraid of a spider at a given moment”), which are occurrent mental states, and emotional dispositions (e.g., “being afraid of spiders in general”). While simple emotional dispositions consist in being disposed to feel only a single kind of emotion (e.g., the disposition to feel fear when seeing a spider), complex emotional dispositions trigger different emotions depending on the circumstances (e.g., love and hate). This latter kind of emotional dispositions is what philosophers often call sentiments (Deonna & Teroni Reference Deonna and Teroni2012).
One common observation in the philosophy of emotions is that many folk concepts of emotions are ambiguous: they refer to both emotions and related emotional dispositions. For example, “He is angry at his father” may refer either to the emotion (“Right now, he is angry at his father”) or to the emotional disposition (“He has been angry at his father for years”). Thus, even if G&F are right to point out that the term “contempt” sometimes refers to a sentiment, whether it also sometimes refers to a distinct emotion remains an open question.
This idea that “contempt” may refer to both a sentiment and an emotion finds additional support in G&F's proposal to define contempt in contrast to respect. Indeed, philosophers are accustomed to distinguishing between different kinds of respect. More particularly, Stephen Darwall has famously drawn a distinction between two kinds of respect: recognition respect and appraisal respect (Darwall Reference Darwall1977). According to Darwall, recognition respect “consists in giving appropriate consideration or recognition to some feature of its object in deliberating about what to do” (p. 38). Thus, “to have recognition respect for persons is to give proper weight to the fact that they are persons” (p. 40). Meanwhile, appraisal respect “consists in an attitude of positive appraisal of that person either as a person or as engaged in some specific pursuit” (p. 38). Thus, appraisal respect takes as objects only persons or features of persons “that manifest their excellence as persons or as engaged in some particular pursuit” (p. 38).
If we were to convert Darwall's proposal into psychological terms, we would probably fall on the following distinction. In one sense, respect amounts to caring for a person, that is, taking her well-being and interests into consideration. In another sense, respect is akin to admiration. In the first sense, we respect people when we do not instrumentalize or wrong them; in the second sense, we respect them when we appraise some of their excellence.
G&F's proposal somewhat conflates both notions in one construct. We have good reasons to keep them apart, however. There are people we do not admire and even consider quite incompetent, but whom we care about, or at least are reluctant to treat as objects (Fiske et al. Reference Fiske, Cuddy, Glick and Xu2002). Recognition respect (i.e., the attitude that prevents us from treating people as mere means to our ends) may occasionally originate in appraisal of skills and abilities, but can as well originate in empathy, or even tenderness in the case of young children (Sherman & Haidt Reference Sherman and Haidt2011).
Thus, if (i) we define contempt by opposition to respect, and (ii) accept that there are different kinds of respect, we should conclude (iii) that there are different kinds of contempt. If recognition respect amounts to care about someone, then its opposite is an absence of care, a pure indifference to someone's fate, which will translate into reduced empathetic reactions. Let's call this first form of contempt disregard. Alternatively, if appraisal respect amounts to admiring someone's excellence or skills, then it seems that contempt should not be defined as the mere absence of admiration, but as the opposite reaction, a negative emotion triggered by the spectacle of incompetence. Let's call this second form of contempt scorn (see our Figure 1).
Figure 1.
Two kinds of contempt (disregard and scorn), the corresponding two kinds of respect, and their properties (Cova Reference Cova2016).
We now have two kinds of contempt, which demarcates between the two conflated notions in G&F's characterization of contempt: lack of care, on the one hand, and focus on poor skills and abilities, on the other. At that stage, we can trace our steps back to the distinction with which we started. On the face of it, our first kind of contempt (disregard) can only be a long-term disposition, that is, a sentiment. This is the side of contempt that G&F's account adequately captures. But if we look at the second kind of contempt (scorn), it looks as if it can be an occurrent mental state, and thus an emotion. We do say that we feel scorn on some occasions (“She felt only scorn for my performance”), even if “scorn” can at other times also describe a more durable emotional disposition (“I have only scorn for p-hackers”). We are thus led to an ambivalent attitude toward G&F's conclusion: the true claim that contempt is a sentiment is only half the story, since contempt is also an emotion. The difference between the two might sometimes be elusive, as scorn often leads to disregard. Still, we think that an account that distinguishes between different meanings of “contempt” is better suited to make sense of the conflicting evidence G&F rightly emphasize.
In their fascinating article, Gervais & Fessler (G&F) draw a distinction between emotions and sentiments and argue that contempt is better understood as a sentiment. G&F's distinction parallels a longstanding distinction in the philosophy of emotion between emotions (e.g., “being afraid of a spider at a given moment”), which are occurrent mental states, and emotional dispositions (e.g., “being afraid of spiders in general”). While simple emotional dispositions consist in being disposed to feel only a single kind of emotion (e.g., the disposition to feel fear when seeing a spider), complex emotional dispositions trigger different emotions depending on the circumstances (e.g., love and hate). This latter kind of emotional dispositions is what philosophers often call sentiments (Deonna & Teroni Reference Deonna and Teroni2012).
One common observation in the philosophy of emotions is that many folk concepts of emotions are ambiguous: they refer to both emotions and related emotional dispositions. For example, “He is angry at his father” may refer either to the emotion (“Right now, he is angry at his father”) or to the emotional disposition (“He has been angry at his father for years”). Thus, even if G&F are right to point out that the term “contempt” sometimes refers to a sentiment, whether it also sometimes refers to a distinct emotion remains an open question.
This idea that “contempt” may refer to both a sentiment and an emotion finds additional support in G&F's proposal to define contempt in contrast to respect. Indeed, philosophers are accustomed to distinguishing between different kinds of respect. More particularly, Stephen Darwall has famously drawn a distinction between two kinds of respect: recognition respect and appraisal respect (Darwall Reference Darwall1977). According to Darwall, recognition respect “consists in giving appropriate consideration or recognition to some feature of its object in deliberating about what to do” (p. 38). Thus, “to have recognition respect for persons is to give proper weight to the fact that they are persons” (p. 40). Meanwhile, appraisal respect “consists in an attitude of positive appraisal of that person either as a person or as engaged in some specific pursuit” (p. 38). Thus, appraisal respect takes as objects only persons or features of persons “that manifest their excellence as persons or as engaged in some particular pursuit” (p. 38).
If we were to convert Darwall's proposal into psychological terms, we would probably fall on the following distinction. In one sense, respect amounts to caring for a person, that is, taking her well-being and interests into consideration. In another sense, respect is akin to admiration. In the first sense, we respect people when we do not instrumentalize or wrong them; in the second sense, we respect them when we appraise some of their excellence.
G&F's proposal somewhat conflates both notions in one construct. We have good reasons to keep them apart, however. There are people we do not admire and even consider quite incompetent, but whom we care about, or at least are reluctant to treat as objects (Fiske et al. Reference Fiske, Cuddy, Glick and Xu2002). Recognition respect (i.e., the attitude that prevents us from treating people as mere means to our ends) may occasionally originate in appraisal of skills and abilities, but can as well originate in empathy, or even tenderness in the case of young children (Sherman & Haidt Reference Sherman and Haidt2011).
Thus, if (i) we define contempt by opposition to respect, and (ii) accept that there are different kinds of respect, we should conclude (iii) that there are different kinds of contempt. If recognition respect amounts to care about someone, then its opposite is an absence of care, a pure indifference to someone's fate, which will translate into reduced empathetic reactions. Let's call this first form of contempt disregard. Alternatively, if appraisal respect amounts to admiring someone's excellence or skills, then it seems that contempt should not be defined as the mere absence of admiration, but as the opposite reaction, a negative emotion triggered by the spectacle of incompetence. Let's call this second form of contempt scorn (see our Figure 1).
Two kinds of contempt (disregard and scorn), the corresponding two kinds of respect, and their properties (Cova Reference Cova2016).
We now have two kinds of contempt, which demarcates between the two conflated notions in G&F's characterization of contempt: lack of care, on the one hand, and focus on poor skills and abilities, on the other. At that stage, we can trace our steps back to the distinction with which we started. On the face of it, our first kind of contempt (disregard) can only be a long-term disposition, that is, a sentiment. This is the side of contempt that G&F's account adequately captures. But if we look at the second kind of contempt (scorn), it looks as if it can be an occurrent mental state, and thus an emotion. We do say that we feel scorn on some occasions (“She felt only scorn for my performance”), even if “scorn” can at other times also describe a more durable emotional disposition (“I have only scorn for p-hackers”). We are thus led to an ambivalent attitude toward G&F's conclusion: the true claim that contempt is a sentiment is only half the story, since contempt is also an emotion. The difference between the two might sometimes be elusive, as scorn often leads to disregard. Still, we think that an account that distinguishes between different meanings of “contempt” is better suited to make sense of the conflicting evidence G&F rightly emphasize.