In folk psychology experiences of ugliness are associated with the negation of beauty and disorder, but empirical evidence is remarkably rare. Here, participants (called informed) took 102 photographs of ugly landscapes and urban scenes and reflected on their experiences. Later, participants naïve to the intentional ugliness in the photographs rated landscapes higher than informed participants. The ratings for urban scenes were similar in the two cohorts. 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 sadness and disgust in urban scenes. The findings uncovered a complex layer of associations. Experiences triggered by perceived ugliness were contingent on a composite of socio-cultural, emotional, and evolutionary factors. Rather than being the endpoint on an aesthetic scale culminating with beauty, ugliness seems to be experienced as an independent aesthetic experience with its own processing streams.

在民间心理学中，丑陋的经历与对美和无序的否定有关，但是经验证据却很少。在这里，参与者（被称为“知情者”）为丑陋的风景和城市场景拍摄了102张照片，并反思了他们的经历。后来，参与者天真地认为照片中的丑陋使风景等级比已知情况高参加者。在这两个队列中，城市场景的评级相似。反光笔记表明，视觉上的丑陋的情感经历可能会重叠（例如衰减），但丑陋与风景中的恐惧和死亡，城市场景中的悲伤和厌恶更频繁地相关。调查结果揭示了一个复杂的关联层。由感知的丑陋引发的经验取决于社会文化，情感和进化因素的综合。丑陋不是作为达到美丽的美学尺度的终点，而是通过其自身的处理流作为独立的审美体验而体验。