An excellent question. That begets an unfortunate discussion. The answer, and no it is not mere opinion but rather measurable and observable fact time and time again, no matter the sampling, no matter the sophistication be it a global consensus and lab setting with years of planning and research behind it or any random grouping of people on the street in a minute's notice, is a resounding, Yes! As far as "do people?", as in, the majority of society.

One could go on starting from the biological markets and "drives", mechanisms and physiological securities and inner workings and what not, perhaps that is after all the best place to start being a largely-influential factor. No doubt compounded by the fact media and advertisements feature "beautiful people", those with flawless skin, seemingly divinely-chiseled features and jawlines. It becomes "normal". And like anything that becomes "normal" that which deviates from said normality activates the discernment or discriminatory functionality in the brain. Naturally, perhaps one who has pierced the veil so to speak, who discovers firsthand often painfully that no, dear child, not all that glitters is in fact gold, they begin to see vanity and beauty for what it is, a skin deep characteristic independent from that of any moral or substantiating worth. This takes time and experience of course. Some never discover this truth. Call them blessed and fortunate, call them unfortunate, living a shallow life with all the depth of a thin layer of congealed fat atop the rich and hearty soup that is the examined life where virtue and character are sought after and appearance is instead but a minor side affect completely independent from beauty, true beauty that is in fact only producible, discoverable, and knowable when one shuts one's eyes to the vain and woefully predictable physicality of this world, instead embracing the value and virtue that comes from one's innermost heart and desire manifested via action and engagement toward fellow man on a true heart-to-heart emotional level instead of false valuation of that which one has little control over and did not a thing to gain nor does a thing to maintain.

Edit: Just caught how you mentioned "beauty in people", as to make it only a side point or but one of many avenues of discussion, considering the fact "goodness" is basically a quality restricted to persons or intelligent beings, not say, architecture, or a well-thought out idea. That would be "soundness", not so much "goodness". Still, from there, take a beautiful song or masterful piece of artwork depicting an old, rundown house. These things would be "visually satisfying", perhaps even mentally or spiritually, that is to say they "hit all the intended marks" or check all the desired boxes, per se. That I suppose is equatable to "goodness", though lacking in any of the fundamental meanings typically associated with such, I'd say..

Nice thoughts Outlander.

While I was thinking in general terms of a person’s physical beauty, the inner beauty of a person, could also be seen as an extension of their goodness too. As in beautiful outside and in could both be equated to goodness in a person.

On a connected note, as everything is commodified today, the "Beauty Industry", promotes beauty as a positive for goodness and badness. The "bad girl look", sells very well. Though, I find it interesting how the beauty industry equates the "bad girl look" to the tomboy look.

So many avenues to travel when talking about beauty/goodness.

Beauty is certainly a good thing, whether it is manifested in. person, a horse, a building, a forest, or the Milky Way. It is not the same thing or equivalent to goodness. A good house or a good man may or may not be "beautiful". People sometimes modify "goodness" with "beautiful". They may even mean that goodness is beautiful. It seems like "goodness" is a sufficiently high quality that it doesn't require further elevation,

While I was thinking in general terms of a person’s physical beauty, the inner beauty of a person, could also be seen as an extension of their goodness too — Rob J Kennedy

What is 'inner beauty', if not goodness? But it's not visible. You would have to know someone quite well to be aware of their inner beauty, whereas, outer beauty is readily accessible to the most casual and superficial observer.

There are certain physical characteristics that are generally attractive and also suggest innocence (child- or baby-like features - large eyes, small nose, rounded forehead) and some that suggest saintliness (long ascetic face, thin mouth, deep nasolabial fold, heavy eyelids) and some that suggest generosity and tolerance (wide eyes, straight gaze, high eyebrows, ready smile, full cheeks). Features of those types can be used to advantage by con artists.
Then there is a type of beauty that suggests predatory sexuality (sultry lips, dark eyes, long lashes, high cheekbones - in men, add square jaw and jutting chin) and one that suggests treachery (blonde hair, clearly defined, symmetrical features).

These stereotypes are from the movies; actors who fit those descriptions have been cast in roles that have long become familiar to audiences. We are conditioned to react to them in predictable ways.

Hey BC,
While beauty can be a good thing as you say, it depends if it's engineered beauty or "natural beauty". Beauty can have very discriminatory aspects. Such as people perceived to be beautiful getting things "average" looking people do not.

But goodness in a person, whether it is perceived or not, as far as I can tell does not hold discriminatory aspects. I'd say on average that "good people" get far less in life than a beautiful person does.

I think most people would think that the concept of beauty is an aesthetic one. But the connection people make to beauty and goodness does seem to be quite strong.

I'm at a loss to explain this to myself, outside the halo effect. Which, I know this effect is strong in me. Maybe I feel this way because of the way literature shows "ugly people" as evil and untrustworthy, read Dickens, Fagin was not beautiful.

On another angle, do we equate poverty as the opposite of beauty?

We are conditioned to react to them in predictable ways. — Vera Mont

I totally agree, Vera Mont. Perceived beauty is a process of our conditioning. I read in a book that old chestnut the other day, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Right next to that it was written "Beauty is in the pen and brush of the creator."

predatory sexuality [...] high cheekbones — Vera Mont

:eyes:

Pretty sure "high cheekbones" are an ethnic, genetic trait. Not a "face" or "expression" one makes, let alone has any conscious control over. Supposedly associated with attractiveness. Ergo, sounds more like wishful thinking on the eye of the beholder. :sweat:

one that suggests treachery (blonde hair, clearly defined, symmetrical features). — Vera Mont

That's an interesting take. :brow:

Sure, Europeans have their reputation, but it was my understanding dark-haired people, epecially when bearded were "considered" or "painted" to be mischievous and untrustworthy or to some "look evil". Google "dark hair untrustworthy", for example. Or this article which states: "In popular culture, people with very dark hair are also stereotyped as sinister, untrustworthy, and wicked. Like the "good witch and the bad witch"." I find all that rather silly but regardless, the stereotype is there. Perhaps you watched one too many Bond movies. :razz:

(further "evidenced" by this Simpsons clip)


Other than that your spot on, I agree. Just felt the need to point out my observations that were in conflict, for some reason. :lol:

Maybe I feel this way because of the way literature shows "ugly people" as evil and untrustworthy, read Dickens, Fagin was not beautiful. — Rob J Kennedy

Hopefully not getting off topic but this is something I've pondered fairly often.

Is it because people, especially the non-wisdom-inclined, we'll say (ie. the majority), tend to treat people differently based on appearance, sometimes outright cruelly, and as such often makes the character of otherwise kindhearted people who happen to be unattractive/short/etc into such? I think so. As opposed to the stereotype you mention being of an independent and intrinsic nature. That would explain a great many things I've experienced. See "short man syndrome". Basically to say, people like that are like that because they've been made like that (were treated poorly or otherwise unfairly [which I've observed can have a snowball effect leading to paranoia and aggression which leads to a persistent mindset of purposeful mistreatment when it is in actuality not present in a given situation]).

Beauty doesn't equate to goodness. But beauty does equate to how much someone wants to associate with you. You can be a good person who society wants nothing to do with.

Beauty, like love, is a very unfortunate word in our culture. Think ‘beauty queens’, the Hollywood icon, the poster girl or boy. I’m sure in times past, and older tongues, there were words that described kinds of beauty, like the beauty of an art or an aesthetic that our modern beauty fashions could never grasp or emulate. An example: that crusty old codger, Bertrand Russell, once said that mathematics has beauty, cold and austere. Mathematicians and physicists and engineers would get that, but nobody generally would say that math is beautiful. So maybe in the classical sense, there can be an association with the good and the beautiful, but it’s far from what those words convey in our modern cultural context.

My intellect tries not to but my body has disagreeable thoughts of its own. I'm not sure my intellect matters much. Only the behaviour.

And I certainly behave more favourably to those I deem beautiful.

Do you equate beauty to goodness? — Rob J Kennedy

Yes, in that they are each conceptions in aesthetic judgements concerning relative quality.

No, in that the objects of the former are to be appreciated; the objects of the latter are to be respected.

I get the feeling that people equate beauty to goodness, do you? — Rob J Kennedy

Never have. In people I tend to associate goodness with behaviour.

Pretty sure "high cheekbones" are an ethnic, genetic trait. Not a "face" or "expression" one makes, let alone has any conscious control over. — Outlander

How the beauty is achieved is beside the point. Sometimes through genetics, sometimes with plastic surgery, sometimes it's painted on or simply assumed - that is, the womanacts as if she were attractive. Seductresses were for a long time depicted as a vaguely Eastern-European type - think Cruella DeVille. Treacherous - not mischievous or unreliable, but coldly calculating - male characters were often depicted as Germanic, while fair-skinned, blonde females were either sweet and innocent or frivolous and gullible.
I suppose I'm out of date - today's stereotypical villains are Middle Eastern or Russian. But I think they are not generally depicted as handsome, beautiful or seductive, more often hulking and hirsute, suggesting violence rather than guile.

Is it because people, especially the non-wisdom-inclined, we'll say (ie. the majority), tend to treat people differently based on appearance, sometimes outright cruelly, and as such often makes the character of otherwise kindhearted people who happen to be unattractive/short/etc into such? — Outlander

There is something to that. Even as very young children, the homely ones can feel the aversion of adults, sense the pity, feel unwanted, even if everyone tries to be kind. By the second or third year of school, the attitude of their peers is so apparent, they can't help but react to it. And there is no recourse - no remedy for instinctive reactions. So the ugly child learns to fall back on whatever their strength is - intelligence, humour, talent, athletic ability, service, cunning, manipulation, aggression or isolation. And that's the adult they grow into, for better or worse. They expect to be shunned and lead with their habitual defense, which very often puts people off even more.

The ugliest human I've ever known wasn't any of those things. Where he came from (Egypt, I think) nobody seemed to care what a boy looked like, so he didn't have an automatic response to the first impression he made on Canadians - which, I'm ashamed to say, was startled disbelief. He was a smart, nice, articulate young man with a gentle sense of humour, and I came to like him so much, after a week of working together, I stopped seeing the mismatched features and saw only the person behind them.

And I certainly behave more favourably to those I deem beautiful. — fdrake

You can behave favorably to evil people. Our behavior towards a person is not an indicator of their inherent good or evil. Do you believe beautiful people are inherently good people compared to less beautiful/deformed people?

I feel like the question in the poll isn't exactly clear, and can be interpreted in many ways. Maybe that's deliberate, but if it is, the poll results won't mean anything, since everyone's answering a different question.

I answered it as if it were asking, "Are you subject to the halo effect? Do you instinctually assume attractive people are better, and unattractive people are worse in some way?"

And I answered that to the positive, I do think I have those biases in my every-day life.

Other people might be answering the question as if it's asking, "Do you REALLY think attractive people are more good?", or any other number of alternative interpretations.

Do you believe beautiful people are inherently good people compared to less beautiful/deformed people? — Philosophim

I certainly seem to treat them as such. Why'd you introduce the word inherent?

You can behave favorably to evil people. Our behavior towards a person is not an indicator of their inherent good or evil. Do you believe beautiful people are inherently good people compared to less beautiful/deformed people?

Definitely not. In my experience, somewhat attractive (beautiful) people are equally likely to be of high or low "goodness", compared to average and somewhat unattractive people. However, exceptionally attractive people are much less likely than average to have high goodness, specifically because in their life experience they've been able to skate by on their looks and develop a privileged and self centered personality that most define as very low on the goodness scale.

Besides the obvious point that they can't equated because they are different words which refer to different things, there is a strong relationship between the two. I will let Aristotle do the talking instead:

But not only are the vices of the soul voluntary, but those of the body also for some men, whom we accordingly blame; while no one blames those who are ugly by nature, we blame those who are so owing to want of exercise and care.

so that the happy man requires in addition the goods of the body, external goods and the gifts of fortune, in order that his activity may not be impeded through lack of them.

This relationship is why I voted yes instead of no.

Do you believe beautiful people are inherently good people compared to less beautiful/deformed people?
— Philosophim

I certainly seem to treat them as such. Why'd you introduce the word inherent? — fdrake

I think its equivalent to what the OP is asking.

Beauty in people seems to have an added dimension. With people we find physically attractive we seem to accociate positive qualities to, such as goodness. I guess this is called the "halo effect", which is a positive impression of someone, or thing, based on how they/it look. — Rob J Kennedy

The word inherent doesn't appear in the OP. The terms that predicate beauty of people in it are "associate" and "impression". Those are circumstantial and perspectival. Neither of those imply anything about the inherency of predicates ascribed to the beautiful on the basis of their beauty; as if those properties were essential rather than relational properties of the person. Though maybe I missed something.

However, exceptionally attractive people are much less likely than average to have high goodness, specifically because in their life experience they've been able to skate by on their looks and develop a privileged and self centered personality that most define as very low on the goodness scale. — LuckyR

Hm, I must disagree here. Among the good looking people, some skate by on their looks while others get bullied for having good looks. For example, in our society there is still jocular contempt for blondes or pretty women in general. Being pretty at a work place means that it is easy for the envious or competitive to cast suspicion on your merits and position, because of the widely spread but false assumption that having good looks is almost always a privilege.

I was just reading about how different blonde and brunette women are treated across society. Blonde women still get the majority of the breaks.

I was just reading about how different blonde and brunette women are treated across society. Blonde women still get the majority of the breaks. — Rob J Kennedy

Possibly of relevance: Color Psychology: How Yellow Color Affects Your Mood?

Most notably: "On the color wheel, yellow is placed among the warm colors which are found to induce feelings of energy, happiness, and optimism. Color specialists and psychologists tell that if you give any child a box of crayons, they will most likely reach for the yellow crayon."

Surprise, surprise. :smile:

Thousands of years of waking up to the same color (the Sun) might have something to do with, no? Almost seems natural, heh.

Good point. And as we all know, blondes have more fun. I wonder if all this applies to the blonde male also?

Chromotherapy is unproven pseudoscience and the Sun is white, not yellow.

I get the feeling that people equate beauty to goodness, do you? — Rob J Kennedy

No.

FWIW, from an old post ...

• the Beautiful property indicates attention-symmetry

• the Good property indicates intention-symmetry.

• the Truth property indicates translation-symmetry — 180 Proof

... or, in other words, "beauty" gives pleasure more memorably than not-beauty whereas "goodness" gives purpose less arbitrarily than not-goodness.

Hm, I must disagree here. Among the good looking people, some skate by on their looks while others get bullied for having good looks. For example, in our society there is still jocular contempt for blondes or pretty women in general. Being pretty at a work place means that it is easy for the envious or competitive to cast suspicion on your merits and position, because of the widely spread but false assumption that having good looks is almost always a privilege.

While what you describe exists, it exists as a (minor, statistically) backlash against the pervasive huge advantage that the very attractive appearing, have over the ordinary and the unattractive.

The sociological literature has demonstrated this advantage repetitively over a long time.

I'll go with one of my favorite theories on the relationship between the two, which sees beauty as an irreducible synthesis of goodness and truth. For St. Aquinas, as well as many other classical thinkers, goodness must lie in objects themselves (res), whereas truth is primarily in the mind (anima, soul).

The case for truth lying primarily in the mind is probably the easiest to understand. (1) Things are not true or false in and of themselves, but rather our beliefs or statements about things are true or false. We wouldn't say an oak tree is "true" simpliciter. Rather we might say beliefs about it are true (or false). Truth can't be equivalent with being because there are very many truths about things that are not. For instance, "it is false that gold has 7 protons," is a true statement about what is not.

Goodness being in things is harder to understand from the modern standpoint. The defacto scientific realism of our day would like to say that truth is "out there," whereas beauty and goodness are "subjective," creations of the mind. But they can't be creations of the mind alone, else we would have the mind spontaneously creating these ex nihilo. So, even in the modern account, things have some role to play in our appraisal of their goodness, otherwise such judgements would be arbitrary and impossible to predict. But man's appetites towards different things is far from unpredictable.

For thinkers from Aristotle to St. Aquinas, goodness had to be external to the soul because goodness is what we desire, the aim of appetites (including the intellectual appetites). It is what causes us to act. We always pursue some good in action, even if this is just the unconscious pursuit of homeostasis. Otherwise, our actions would be arbitrary and spring from nothing.

Goodness is the target of practical reason, the judgement of good versus bad. If goodness lay internal to the soul, the soul would have to be self moving, since the whole reason we begin any action is to achieve some good (even if we act unconsciously, e.g. scratching an itch to get relief). But, phenomenologicaly speaking, it seems given that what we desire usually lies outside of us. Experience also tells us that the soul is not entirely self-moving. People do not create themselves, and they are often motivated by extrinsic entities. This is why goodness has to lie, in some important respect, out in things.(2) The key insight here doesn't seem totally at odds with the modern view when examined closely. What motivates us to think things are good has to do with those things; if goodness lay primarily internal to us we would not primarily desire what lies outside of us.

Notably, this does not make the goodness of things rigidly fixed in experience. They clearly aren't. Judgements of appearances can obviously vary, and the goodness of the sensible objects of desire are appearances. Goodness is not unrelated to minds, in the same way that color is not unrelated to minds. However, the primary locus of goodness and color is things. We might say that they exist in virtual form (intentions in the media) in things. The sign that we interpret as red, good, etc. comes from the thing, where as truth applies to beliefs—propositions—which are essentially intellectual entities.

Now, goodness, truth, and beauty are considered "transcedentals." They are transcedentals because everything can be said to have them, but they are not covered by any of Aristotle's categories, which otherwise seem to define things. That is, the truth, goodness, and beauty of a thing, does not reduce to its substance (what it is, e.g., horse, rock, etc.), where it is, when it is, how it is positioned, etc. Goodness, truth, and beauty "transcend" these categories. For instance, it is really easy to see how truth applies to all categories. We can make true statements about any thing vis-á-vis all the categories (e.g. it is true that Spot is a dog, is on the floor, is laying down, etc.).

So how do beauty and goodness relate? Consider the classical formulation of beauty as: “that which, when
perceived, pleases or gives delight" (the includes non-sensible perception, e.g. the beauty of mathematics). Beauty is the appearance of goodness. It sits astride mind and thing, uniting the two. We tend to think of appearance as opposed to reality, but it might be better to think of Plato's divided line here, primarily that it is all one line, not two separate lines with nothing to do with one another. Every point on the line involves some truth. There is a truth about appearances and a thing's appearances are part of a full, truthful account of what it is. To the extent that beauty involves goodness and desire, its locus is in the thing itself. Yet beauty also inheritly involves a subject and an aesthetic judgement, whose locus lies in the soul. Appearance is a sort of self-showing, a making present of reality — it is a revelation of being (and so of truth as well).

As Aquinas puts it: “ beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty." We could consider here also Kant's insight on the disinterested (non-self centered) nature of the appraisal of beauty. One does not see the Grand Canyon and want to do something with it (except perhaps share it's beauty through some art). It is thus not a concern of practical reason (goodness) even though beauty is clearly good in a sense. We could also consider here how Schiller and others have noted how beauty affects all of us. It is an aid against fragmentation. It "draws us together." It also draws us towards the world, in that it draws us to beautiful things, while at the same time it draws us into ourselves through contemplation. Beauty then, plays a crucial role in our experience of reality.





(1) This is covered by St. Thomas in the Disputed Questions, among other places.

(2) The section "On the Human Good" in the Summa Contra Gentiles covers this well