The Experience of Ugliness in Nature and Urban environments

In folk psychology experiences of ugliness are often associated with the negation of beauty, distress and disorder, but empirical evidence is remarkably rare. Here, participants (referred to as informed participants) took 102 photographs of ugly landscapes and urban scenes (later used on a survey) and reflected on their experiences while taking them. In another phase of the study participants naïve to the intentional ugliness in the photographs rated landscapes higher than informed participants, but the range of liking ratings was wider in the latter group. The ratings for urban scenes were similar in the two cohorts (n = 92). The reflective notes revealed that emotional experiences with visual ugliness could overlap (e.g. decay), but ugliness was associated more frequently with fear and death in landscapes, and with physical and moral disgust and sadness in urban scenes. The findings uncovered a complex layer of experiential associations that varied within participants and environments. Emotions triggered by perceived ugliness were contingent on a composite of socio-cultural, emotional, and evolutionary factors. Jointly, the data suggest that ugliness is perceived as an independent aesthetic experience with its own processing streams rather than the endpoints on an imaginary scale culminating with beauty.