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Building a house of sentiment on sand: Epistemological issues with contempt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2017

Heather C. Lench ,
Shane W. Bench  and
Kenneth A. Perez
Heather C. Lench
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4235. hlench@tamu.eduswbench@gmail.comkenneth.perez@tamu.eduwww.heatherlench.com
Shane W. Bench
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4235. hlench@tamu.eduswbench@gmail.comkenneth.perez@tamu.eduwww.heatherlench.com
Kenneth A. Perez
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4235. hlench@tamu.eduswbench@gmail.comkenneth.perez@tamu.eduwww.heatherlench.com
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Abstract

Contempt shares its features with other emotions, indicating that there is no justification for creating “sentiment” as a new category of feelings. Scientific categories must be created or updated on the basis of evidence. Building a new category on the currently limited contempt literature would be akin to building a house on sand – likely to fall at any moment.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 40 , 2017 , e242
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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