Contempt, is a pattern of attitudes and behaviour, often toward an individual, group but sometimes towards an ideology, which has the characteristics of disgust and anger.[1][page needed]
(Redirected from Disdain)
This picture of Thomas Ward, arrested for stealing a coin, can be seen as showing contempt.
A painting by Louis-Léopold Boilly (ca. 1797).
The woman has been interpreted as a prostitute (who is disdaining the inadequate coin proffered by the fashionable gentleman getting his shoes shined at left).
The word originated in 1393, from the Latin word contemptus meaning 'scorn'. It is the past participle of contemnere and from com- intensive prefix + temnere 'to slight, scorn'. Contemptuous appeared in 1529.[2]
John Gottman Expression Of Disdain Meaning
It is classified among Paul Ekman's seven basic emotions of contempt, anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise.
Robert C. Solomon places contempt on the same continuum as resentment and anger, and he argues that the differences between the three are that resentment is anger directed toward a higher-status individual; anger is directed toward an equal-status individual; and contempt is anger directed toward a lower-status individual.[3][page needed]
Cultural context[edit]
Facial expression of contempt
Ekman and Friesen (1986) identified a specific facial expression that observers in ten different cultures, both Western and non-Western, agreed signaled contempt. In this study, citizens of West Sumatra, Indonesia, were given photos of American, Japanese, and Indonesian peoples. Their ability to classify some facial expressions as contempt versus the primary emotions of anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, fear, or surprise showed that across cultures, general contempt is universally understood (with level of agreement equating to 75%).[4] âAn expression in which the corner of the lip is tightened and raised slightly on one side of the face (or much more strongly on one side than the other) signaled contempt.â This study showed that contempt, as well as the outward expression of contempt, can be pointed out across Western and Non-Western peoples when contrasted with other primary emotions.
Characteristics[edit]
Paul Ekman, a widely recognized psychologist, found six emotions that were universally recognized: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. Findings on contempt are less clear, though there is at least some preliminary evidence that this emotion and its expression are universally recognized.[5]
In the 1990s Ekman proposed an expanded list of emotions, this time including contempt.[6]
Defining features[edit]
Contempt has five features.[7] Contempt requires a judgment concerning the appearance or standing of the object of contempt. In particular, contempt involves the judgment that, because of some moral or personal failing or defect, the contemned person has compromised his or her standing vis-Ã -vis an interpersonal standard that the contemptor treats as important. This may have not been done deliberately but by a lack of status. This lack of status may cause the contemptuous to classify the object of contempt as utterly worthless, or as not fully meeting a particular interpersonal standard. Therefore, contempt is a response to a perceived failure to meet an interpersonal standard. Contempt is also a particular way of regarding or attending to the object of contempt, and this form of regard has an unpleasant affective element. However, contempt may be experienced as a highly visceral emotion similar to disgust, or as cool disregard.
Facial expression showing subtle contempt
Contempt has a certain comparative element. In David Hume's studies of contempt, he suggests that contempt essentially requires apprehending the âbad qualitiesâ of someone âas they really areâ while simultaneously making a comparison between this person and ourselves. Because of this reflexive element, contempt also involves what we might term a âpositive self-feelingâ of the contemptuous. A characteristic of contempt is the psychological withdrawal or distance one typically feels regarding the object of oneâs contempt. This psychological distancing is an essential way of expressing oneâs nonidentification with the object of oneâs contempt and it precludes sympathetic identification with the object of contempt. (Hume, 2002, 251) Contempt for a person involves a way of negatively and comparatively regarding or attending to someone who has not fully lived up to an interpersonal standard that the person extending contempt thinks is important. This form of regard constitutes a psychological withdrawal from the object of contempt.[7]
Virtues[edit]
Contempt can be useful to being a functioning member of the moral community. Win 7 creator utility. An ethics of contempt provides a much larger breadth of answers than other competing systems of ethics, whether they be based on ethics of actions (judging actions by their rightness or wrongness) or ethics of feelings (e.g., ethics of resentment). By feeling contempt for those things which are found to be unethical, immoral, or morally unsavory, one can both show that they are bad and remove them from the moral community.[8][page needed]
Response[edit]
The main response of contempt lies within âpublicized expression of low regard for the objects held in contemptâ (Miller, C.H., 2005). By this reasoning, a person holding contempt would not have the urge to openly confront the person with whom they are at odds, nor would they themselves try to remove the object of contempt; rather, one who holds contempt would have the tendency to hold the view that others should remove the object of contempt, or hold the view that the object of contempt should remove itself. So while one would make their feelings known to others, the person with contempt would not necessarily want to directly deal with the situation at hand. One who is experiencing contempt would exhibit negative affective behaviors that may be labeled as âcoldâ â this simply meaning that one who is experiencing the emotion of contempt would tend to alienate those responsible.[9][page needed]
Contempt in relationships[edit]Gender differences[edit]
Men and women act differently when displaying contempt in same-sex relationships. Not only do girls engage in more non-verbal forms of social aggression than boys do, girls dissembled more than boys do, speaking nicely but making mean faces. In the research provided by Underwood (2004) in their laboratory observation studies where they watch girls and boys in an identical social context in which best friends respond to a provoking newcomer, gender differences emerge not for the verbal behaviours, but for the nonverbal expressions of disdain and contempt (which are so glaring that they were observed with high degrees of inter-coder reliability by both women and men, kappaâs exceeding .8; Underwood et al., 2003).[10]
There are several reasons why girls can be especially prone to conveying anger and contempt by nonverbal forms of social exclusion. One reason may be that girls are socialized from infancy onward to be overtly nice and conciliatory and do so to avoid conflict whenever possible, for fear of being excluded from relationships, disliked, or punished (for reviews, see Brown and Gilligan, 1993; Underwood, 2003; Zahn-Waxler, 2000). Non-verbal forms of social exclusion may be a highly effective way to harm someone with relatively few social consequences; the hurtful act is fleeting, can often be executed behind the victimâs back and outside of the watchful eyes of adults, and, even if caught, mean faces are typically not punished. Second, girls may hurt one another via non-verbal expressions of exclusion or disdain because girls and women may gaze at others more for reasons related to their lower social status, so as to learn as much as possible about othersâ needs and desires (see LaFrance, 2002, for a discussion of âSmile boycotts and other body politicsâ, p. 319).
Because girls and women gaze at others often, perhaps mean glares are more effective as a means of wielding power. Third, non-verbal forms of social exclusion may be powerful for girls because their relationships involve high levels of intimacy and self-disclosure (see Buhrmester and Prager, 1995, for a review), thus even subtle indicators of exclusion are threatening. Fourth, non-verbal forms of social exclusion may be powerful for girls because although they fiercely desire and defend popularity with other girls, they dread being labelled as âstuck upâ (Merten, 1997).[10]
Legal responses[edit]
In 2003, the Palo Alto City Council defeated a resolution that would have discouraged elected officials from facial expressions conveying contempt at public meetings; this was proposed because council members were so weary of colleagues intimidating one another by these subtle but rude facial expressions.[11]
Marriage[edit]
Research demonstrates how childhood abuse ties into maladaptive communication dynamics consisting of contempt-laden conflict and emotional withdrawal. These findings are important because maladaptive marital communication may be one mechanism by which traumatic childhood experiences translate into poor adult relationship quality. Forms of verbal aggression, such as contempt, belligerence, and defensiveness, are associated with destructive, hostile patterns of conflict resolution ( [Gottman et al., 1998] and [Straus, 1979]). Couples who use such communication styles are more likely to have higher levels of marital distress (Roberts, 2000), lower levels of marital satisfaction (Holman and Jarvis, 2003), and lower levels of marital stability ([Gottman et al., 1998], [Holman and Jarvis, 2003] and [DeMaris, 2000]).[12]
Gottman (1999) identified several behaviors that are particularly indicative of distress in relationships. One series of behaviors, which he termed the 'four horsemen,' includes a cascading of responses such as expressing criticism, defensiveness, contempt, sarcasm, hostility, and withdrawal, the combination of which indicate a critical state of marriage dissolution.[13]
Carstensen, Gottman, and Levenson (1995) found that âNegative emotional behavior, such as expressed anger, sadness, contempt, and other negative emotions, appears to be the best discriminator between satisfied and dissatisfied marriagesâ. Carstensen, Gottman, and Levenson (1995) also discovered that âIn terms of speaker behaviors, wives were coded as showing more total emotion, negative emotion, anger, joy, contempt, whining, and sadness.â This supports the stereotype that women express more emotion than men both in general and in relationships. It also supports the idea that men are less expressive than women and tend to be more defensive minded in conversations.[14]
Six short self-report measures were used to assess several component communication skills (Gottman 1999). Specifically, the questionnaires assessed Repair Attempts, Accepting Influence, Harsh Start-Up, Flooding, Gridlock, and the Four Horsemen. These six measures were chosen because they were of theoretical and clinical interest to the authors, incorporated both adaptive and maladaptive communication behaviors, and included those aspects of couple communication considered by many to be most toxic, including withdrawal and contempt (Gottman 1999; Gottman et al. 1998; Johnson 2003).[13] Finally, the Four Horsemen create a cascading sequence of responses in which one partner expresses criticism and the other partner responds with defensiveness, causing the first partner to react to the defensiveness with contempt, sarcasm, and/or hostility with their partner, eventually withdrawing from, or stonewalling, the conversation. Tf2 mods not working 2019. This cascading negative sequence which occurs as a repetitive, interlocking pattern is believed to signify a critical end-stage process of relationship dissolution, representing a final common causal pathway to relationship dissolution (see Gottman 1994).[13]
In the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, author Malcolm Gladwell discusses John Gottman's theories of how to predict which couples will stay married. Gottman's theory states that there are four major emotional reactions that are destructive to a marriage: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. Among these four, Gottman considers contempt the most destructive of them all.[15] For all other forms of aggression the Four Horsemen emerged as significant predictors of classification, which is expected given that this construct includes very negative, contemptuous behaviors. This is consistent with marital research, which contends that these communication behaviors are highly toxic, and erode relationship satisfaction (Cornelius et al. 2007; Gottman 1999).[13][15]
Parental relationships[edit]
In abusive relationships between parents and children, the abusive parent may hold contemptuous views towards their child, or vice versa.[citation needed]
Stature[edit]
People feel contempt towards a low status individual at a distant proximity, with other emotions resulting from different combinations.[16]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Contempt&oldid=903006354'
Every relationship has its ups and downs, but if you get the faintest whiff of contempt - whether it's coming from you or at you - be warned: your love life could be in deep trouble.
This most corrosive of emotions might be thinly veiled in sarcastic jibes or in phrases such as 'You're so useless!', but there's nothing hidden about 'contempt face'. It's a brief sneer that combines an eye roll with a tiny, almost imperceptible lift of the top lip on the left side of the mouth.
I've been studying relationships for more than 40 years and my research has taught me that 'contempt face' is a very bad sign. You must never dismiss it as banter, tetchiness or grumpiness.
Pulling a face of contempt when you look at your partner is the number on predictor of divorce, say Professor John Gottman (stock image)
Put simply, according to my experience, it is the number one predictor of divorce.
With my wife, Dr Julie Schwartz Gottman, I ran a scientific laboratory (dubbed the 'Love Lab') at the University of Washington, where we studied real couples interacting and arguing. We monitored their signs of stress, body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, words, gestures and emotions.
We have analysed the dynamics of good and bad couple behaviour, researching what causes fights and animosity and the effects different ways of interacting have on the success of a relationship.
We believe we can predict with 94 per cent accuracy whether or not a couple is heading for divorce. And a contemptuous sneer is a dead giveaway.
Share this article
It is a tell-tale facial tic for both genders, revealing how they really feel about their partner. Though it lasts for a micro-second, it can be extremely denigrating. And the more it occurs, the more your relationship is doomed.
Though disagreements and fights are a normal part of any relationship, we train the couples we counsel to be alert for what we call the 'four horsemen of the apocalypse' for relationships.
These are the common negative patterns of communication that can trigger a fight about seemingly nothing. They are: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling (shutting down, no eye contact, avoiding communication) and contempt. The four horsemen typically ride together.
When a relationship starts to go bad, women are particularly prone to unleashing apocalyptic criticism. This is when you find yourself attacking your partner rather than just their irritating behaviour.
Professor John Gottman, right, with his wife Dr Julie Gottman, left. The couple study real couples interacting and say they can predict with 94 per cent accuracy whether divorce is on the cards
A harmless complaint might be: 'You've left the top off the toothpaste again - I wish you'd replace it when you use it.'
A potentially apocalyptic criticism would be: 'What the hell is wrong with you that you can't even be bothered to put the lid back on the toothpaste?'
The second horseman is the defensiveness that crashes into play if either of you feels you're under attack. It might take the form of an even harsher counter-attack ('Well, what about you? You're a complete mess!') or embittered whining. Either way, it escalates arguments - fast.
Men are worryingly prone to ushering in the third horseman, stonewalling, particularly in the face of criticism. This is a sudden and total withdrawal from inter-action, even though you're in the same room.
Look out for crossed arms and a studious avoidance of eye contact, which are the body's natural attempts to self-calm, but which can be infuriating to deal with and very often only serve to wind both parties up into more of a frenzy.
In the face of criticism, men typically shut down and women often become critical, and both become defensive
Left unattended, arguments like this can easily escalate as attacks and counter attacks descend into sarcastic jibes and with insults flying.
And that's when the final horseman - contempt - leaps forward. It might be thinly disguised as an apparently witty put-down or shrouded in bitter humour, but at its root is angry disdain and an attempt to be superior, mocking or divisive.
The four horsemen can come riding into any relationship at any time, but our studies show there are classic danger points to watch out for.
Peak time for divorce if your relationship has the four horsemen is 5.6 years after the wedding.
When couples don't have the four horsemen, but lack any of the positive emotions that make conflict easier (affection, humour, empathy), they divorce an average of 16.2 years into their marriage.
One trigger is if a relationship has become too child-centred or work-centred and the parents end up running like trains on separate tracks - living together but effectively separate, no longer surprising each other with gifts or compliments or initiating sex.
When shared humour, romance or passion leave the relationship, the horsemen can appear. Criticism often comes first; but the others, particularly defensiveness and stonewalling, will usually be close behind.
The Man's Guide To Women by Drs John and Julie Gottman (Rodale)
Free sms good morning. In the face of criticism, men typically shut down and women often become critical, and both become defensive. And if you don't do something to defuse the situation, contempt will soon gallop onto the scene.
You may not be aware of it happening, but your ability to listen drops, all sense of empathy starts to slip away and then your sense of humour will disappear completely.
Contempt can take slightly different forms in men and women. Women tend to be more openly critical, directly attacking perceived character flaws in their partners.
So instead of calmly saying: 'Please don't use your phone at dinner,' they skip the usual niceties and blurt out: 'You're so thoughtless!'
Men, on the other hand, can be quite patronising, using mocking language to demean or denigrate their partner ('Really? Can you really be that dense?').
And it is always made worse if family or friends are present and are invited to join in.
Whether you are dishing it out or on the receiving end, contempt can be a killer. There's nothing else quite so destructive to love - and to your health.
This is because the heated emotions can cause a chemical cascade of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which wreak havoc throughout the body.
In fact, our studies show contempt is not only the biggest predictor of relationship demise, but also of how many illnesses the recipient will have in the next four years - it can even lead to earlier death in men.
In 25 per cent of the troubled couples we see, contempt has already taken hold and sealed the fate for that relationship before we can intervene.
If a relationship is allowed to become emotionally abusive, if one or both partners are constantly on the attack, belittling and demeaning, it simply cannot survive.
But in 75 per cent of troubled couples, we are able to turn things around, put a stop to contempt, banish the four horsemen, and usher back harmony.
The key, when facing contempt, is teaching yourself to wait a moment, breathe deeply, fight all your instincts to withdraw or retaliate, then make a considered effort to respond - not to your partner's appalling behaviour, but to the feelings that lie beneath it.
It's all about noticing your partner's heightened emotion - not their behaviour - and saying something such as: 'I can see you're upset; talk to me, I'm listening,' not: 'You are being horrid to me.' The aim is to be able to turn around in the face of a contemptuous attack, swallow your pride, pain and fury and to be able to say something calming that initiates conversation (for example: 'I'm listening, talk to me').
We train our couples to resist the urge to respond immediately when under attack, even in the face of vicious criticism.
Of course, this takes huge reserves of self-control, but we have found that practising mindfulness or breathing exercises can build your mental resources.
When confrontation happens, you are ready and primed to breathe deeply, pause and say something positive to defuse the situation and send those other horsemen away.
It's not like saying 'count to ten' - ten is far too long. You just need one very small pause - inhale slowly - to make an impact on all the hormones rushing around both of your bodies.
The aim is to get the person exhibiting contemptuous behaviour to move from a position of attack to one of self-disclosure by asking: 'What is actually bothering you? What do you need?'
From there it should be possible to listen to each other's points of view and explain your feelings without apportioning blame.
Men can find this process particularly tricky because, genetically, they have a greater inclination to 'flood' with heightened emotion.
Studies have shown that 45 per cent of men can pause, wait a moment and defuse contempt, but 55 per cent of them find it tough. For women, thankfully, the ratio is reversed.
But with practice and consideration, loving couples can learn to spot the four horsemen approaching and can find ways to stop themselves before they say something contemptuous.
Even if they can't stop in time, their partner knows how to step in to stop the problem from escalating.
We advise all our couples to practice mindfulness because it helps you connect with emotions and makes it easier to pull yourself back from the edge of contempt.
It's got to be worth it. Just a few breathing exercises and a little bit of loving consideration are all it takes for you to enjoy a happy, fulfilled relationship long into old age.
Interview by Louise Atkinson. Adapted from The Man's Guide To Women by Drs John and Julie Gottman (Rodale).
Contempt, not classified among Paul Ekman's six basic emotions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, is a mixture of disgust and anger.[1] The word originated in 1393, from the Latin word contemptus meaning 'scorn'. It is the past participle of contemnere and from com- intensive prefix + temnere 'to slight, scorn'. The origin is uncertain. Contemptuous appeared in 1529.[2]
Robert C. Solomon places contempt on the same continuum as resentment and anger, and he argues that the differences between the three are that resentment is anger directed toward a higher-status individual; anger is directed toward an equal-status individual; and contempt is anger directed toward a lower-status individual.[3]
Cultural context
Ekman and Friesen (1986) identified a specific facial expression that observers in ten different cultures, both Western and non-Western, agreed signaled contempt. In this study, citizens of West Sumatra, Indonesia, were given photos of American, Japanese, and Indonesian peoples. Their ability to classify some facial expressions as contempt versus the primary emotions of anger, disgust, happiness, sadness, fear, or surprise showed that across cultures, general contempt is universally understood (with level of agreement equating to 75%).[4] âAn expression in which the corner of the lip is tightened and raised slightly on one side of the face (or much more strongly on one side than the other) signaled contempt.â This study showed that contempt, as well as the outward expression of contempt, can be pointed out across Western and Non-Western peoples when contrasted with other primary emotions.
Characteristics
Paul Ekman, a widely recognized psychologist, found six emotions that were universally recognized: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise. Findings on contempt are less clear, though there is at least some preliminary evidence that this emotion and its expression are universally recognized.[5]
In the 1990s Ekman proposed an expanded list of emotions, this time including contempt.[6]
Defining features
Contempt has five features.[7] Contempt requires a judgment concerning the appearance or standing of the object of contempt. In particular, contempt involves the judgment that, because of some moral or personal failing or defect, the contemned person has compromised his or her standing vis-Ã -vis an interpersonal standard that the contemptor treats as important. This may have not been done deliberately but by a lack of status. This lack of status may cause the contemptuous to classify the object of contempt as utterly worthless, or as not fully meeting a particular interpersonal standard. Therefore, contempt is a response to a perceived failure to meet an interpersonal standard. Contempt is also a particular way of regarding or attending to the object of contempt, and this form of regard has an unpleasant affective element. However, contempt may be experienced as a highly visceral emotion similar to disgust, or as cool disregard.
Contempt has a certain comparative element. In David Hume's studies of contempt, he suggests that contempt essentially requires apprehending the âbad qualitiesâ of someone âas they really areâ while simultaneously making a comparison between this person and ourselves. Because of this reflexive element, contempt also involves what we might term a âpositive self-feelingâ of the contemptuous. A characteristic of contempt is the psychological withdrawal or distance one typically feels regarding the object of oneâs contempt. This psychological distancing is an essential way of expressing oneâs nonidentification with the object of oneâs contempt and it precludes sympathetic identification with the object of contempt. (Hume, 2002, 251) Contempt for a person involves a way of negatively and comparatively regarding or attending to someone who has not fully lived up to an interpersonal standard that the person extending contempt thinks is important. This form of regard constitutes a psychological withdrawal from the object of contempt.[7]
Virtues
Contempt can be useful to being a functioning member of the moral community. An ethics of contempt provides a much larger breadth of answers than other competing systems of ethics, whether they be based on ethics of actions (judging actions by their rightness or wrongness) or ethics of feelings (e.g., ethics of resentment). By feeling contempt for those things which are found to be unethical, immoral, or morally unsavory, one can both show that they are bad and remove them from the moral community.[8]
Response
The main response of contempt lies within âpublicized expression of low regard for the objects held in contemptâ (Miller, C.H., 2005). By this reasoning, a person holding contempt would not have the urge to openly confront the person with whom they are at odds, nor would they themselves try to remove the object of contempt; rather, one who holds contempt would have the tendency to hold the view that others should remove the object of contempt, or hold the view that the object of contempt should remove itself. So while one would make their feelings known to others, the person with contempt would not necessarily want to directly deal with the situation at hand. One who is experiencing contempt would exhibit negative affective behaviors that may be labeled as âcoldâ â this simply meaning that one who is experiencing the emotion of contempt would tend to alienate those responsible.[9]
Contempt in relationshipsGender differences
Men and women act differently when displaying contempt in same-sex relationships. Not only do girls engage in more non-verbal forms of social aggression than boys do, girls dissembled more than boys do, speaking nicely but making mean faces. In the research provided by Underwood (2004) in their laboratory observation studies where they watch girls and boys in an identical social context in which best friends respond to a provoking newcomer, gender differences emerge not for the verbal behaviours, but for the nonverbal expressions of disdain and contempt (which are so glaring that they were observed with high degrees of inter-coder reliability by both women and men, kappaâs exceeding .8; Underwood et al., 2003).[10]
There are several reasons why girls can be especially prone to conveying anger and contempt by nonverbal forms of social exclusion. One reason may be that girls are socialized from infancy onward to be overtly nice and conciliatory and do so to avoid conflict whenever possible, for fear of being excluded from relationships, disliked, or punished (for reviews, see Brown and Gilligan, 1993; Underwood, 2003; Zahn-Waxler, 2000). Non-verbal forms of social exclusion may be a highly effective way to harm someone with relatively few social consequences; the hurtful act is fleeting, can often be executed behind the victimâs back and outside of the watchful eyes of adults, and, even if caught, mean faces are typically not punished. Second, girls may hurt one another via non-verbal expressions of exclusion or disdain because girls and women may gaze at others more for reasons related to their lower social status, so as to learn as much as possible about othersâ needs and desires (see LaFrance, 2002, for a discussion of âSmile boycotts and other body politicsâ, p. 319). Because girls and women gaze at others often, perhaps mean glares are more effective as a means of wielding power. Third, non-verbal forms of social exclusion may be powerful for girls because their relationships involve high levels of intimacy and self-disclosure (see Buhrmester and Prager, 1995, for a review), thus even subtle indicators of exclusion are threatening. Fourth, non-verbal forms of social exclusion may be powerful for girls because although they fiercely desire and defend popularity with other girls, they dread being labelled as âstuck upâ (Merten, 1997).[10]
Legal responses
In 2003, the Palo Alto City Council defeated a resolution that would have discouraged elected officials from facial expressions conveying contempt at public meetings; this was proposed because council members were so weary of colleagues intimidating one another by these subtle but rude facial expressions.[11]
Marriage
Research demonstrates how childhood abuse ties into maladaptive communication dynamics consisting of contempt-laden conflict and emotional withdrawal. These findings are important because maladaptive marital communication may be one mechanism by which traumatic childhood experiences translate into poor adult relationship quality.
Forms of verbal aggression, such as contempt, belligerence, and defensiveness, are associated with destructive, hostile patterns of conflict resolution ([Gottman et al., 1998] and [Straus, 1979]). Couples who use such communication styles are more likely to have higher levels of marital distress (Roberts, 2000), lower levels of marital satisfaction (Holman and Jarvis, 2003), and lower levels of marital stability ([Gottman et al., 1998], [Holman and Jarvis, 2003] and [DeMaris, 2000]).[12]
Gottman (1999) identified several behaviors that are particularly indicative of distress in relationships. One series of behaviors, which he termed the 'four horsemen,' includes a cascading of responses such as expressing criticism, defensiveness, contempt, sarcasm, hostility, and withdrawal, the combination of which indicate a critical state of marriage dissolution.[13]
Carstensen, Gottman, and Levenson (1995) found that âNegative emotional behavior, such as expressed anger, sadness, contempt, and other negative emotions, appears to be the best discriminator between satisfied and dissatisfied marriagesâ. Carstensen, Gottman, and Levenson (1995) also discovered that âIn terms of speaker behaviors, wives were coded as showing more total emotion, negative emotion, anger, joy, contempt, whining, and sadness.â This supports the stereotype that women express more emotion than men both in general and in relationships. It also supports the idea that men are less expressive than women and tend to be more defensive minded in conversations.[14]
Six short self-report measures were used to assess several component communication skills (Gottman 1999). Specifically, the questionnaires assessed Repair Attempts, Accepting Influence, Harsh Start-Up, Flooding, Gridlock, and the Four Horsemen. These six measures were chosen because they were of theoretical and clinical interest to the authors, incorporated both adaptive and maladaptive communication behaviors, and included those aspects of couple communication considered by many to be most toxic, including withdrawal and contempt (Gottman 1999; Gottman et al. 1998; Johnson 2003).[13]
Finally, the Four Horsemen create a cascading sequence of responses in which one partner expresses criticism and the other partner responds with defensiveness, causing the first partner to react to the defensiveness with contempt, sarcasm, and/or hostility with their partner, eventually withdrawing from, or stonewalling, the conversation. This cascading negative sequence which occurs as a repetitive, interlocking pattern is believed to signify a critical end-stage process of relationship dissolution, representing a final common causal pathway to relationship dissolution (see Gottman 1994).[13]
In the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, author Malcolm Gladwell discusses John Gottman's theories of how to predict which couples will stay married. Gottman's theory states that there are four major emotional reactions that are destructive to a marriage: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt. Among these four, Gottman considers contempt the most destructive of them all.
For all other forms of aggression the Four Horsemen emerged as significant predictors of classification, which is expected given that this construct includes very negative, contemptuous behaviors. This is consistent with marital research, which contends that these communication behaviors are highly toxic, and erode relationship satisfaction (Cornelius et al. 2007; Gottman 1999).[13][15]
Parental relationships
In abusive relationships between parents and children, the abusive parent may hold contemptuous views towards their child, or vice versa.
Stature
People feel contempt towards a low status individual at a distant proximity, with other emotions resulting from different combinations.[16]
See alsoNotes and References
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