The Moral Psychology of Contempt

The eye roll, the smirk, the unilateral lip curl. These, psychologists tell us, are typical expressions of contempt. Across cultures, such expressions manifest an emotional response to norm violations, among them moral norms. As such, contempt is of tremendous personal and social significance – whether in the context of a marriage on the rocks or a country in the grips of racial unrest. Scholarship on contempt, however, lags far behind that of other emotional responses to norm violations, s...