Is this picture disgusting or beautiful?

[Dogoegma]

They are beautiful. My first thought, before reading the text, was that the child was ill and his father was holding him. It's difficult for me to understand how anyone could possibly see this as disgusting.

Something I think people here miss is subconscious human psychology. I am an undergraduate so take what I say with a heavy grain of salt, but I am familiar with some ideas of psychology.

Humans have not been around for very long (geologically speaking) and thus our "genetic" "psychological software" is not used to the high tech world that we live in now. The mark of human civilization is the suppression of imidiate instincts, however we still have about a million plus years or so of "chimp" level genetic programming (I am taking evolutionary psychology as a given here). We should be careful how we evaluate others reactions.

I completely agree that people are looking at the worst in this picture, and that there is nothing wrong here (picturewise). Yet, the general public perception is going to default to fear and negativity in general. Fear, and other negative emotions, in this case, are the subconscious initial position.

Many of you (me included) have subconscious bias that would predispose you to having an irrational fear response [by the way, as far as media goes, this is why stories that fear/enrage get the most attention and therefore profit]. Some examples might include (but not limited to), an opposing political figure (no Hilary is not evil, and no Trump isn't either), a religion (pick an Abrahamic faith for classic examples here), unstable governments (where such a fear might be justifiable), people with different perspectives etc. in all these examples you will notice that people tend to have strong fear based reactions that usually (obviously not always) are completely irrational and most likely media driven (not that they're the bad guy either).

Tl;dr (and I'm tired and just getting up for the day) don't be too surprised if an event that any rational person would see has noncontroversial  will be seen as such by the general public. The general public tends to react from the gut, one of the most primitive parts of the mind that has kept us alive till now.

[sargam]

They are beautiful. My first thought, before reading the text, was that the child was ill and his father was holding him. It's difficult for me to understand how anyone could possibly see this as disgusting.

Something I think people here miss is subconscious human psychology. I am an undergraduate so take what I say with a heavy grain of salt, but I am familiar with some ideas of psychology.

Humans have not been around for very long (geologically speaking) and thus our "genetic" "psychological software" is not used to the high tech world that we live in now. The mark of human civilization is the suppression of imidiate instincts, however we still have about a million plus years or so of "chimp" level genetic programming (I am taking evolutionary psychology as a given here). We should be careful how we evaluate others reactions.

I completely agree that people are looking at the worst in this picture, and that there is nothing wrong here (picturewise). Yet, the general public perception is going to default to fear and negativity in general. Fear, and other negative emotions, in this case, are the subconscious initial position.

Many of you (me included) have subconscious bias that would predispose you to having an irrational fear response [by the way, as far as media goes, this is why stories that fear/enrage get the most attention and therefore profit]. Some examples might include (but not limited to), an opposing political figure (no Hilary is not evil, and no Trump isn't either), a religion (pick an Abrahamic faith for classic examples here), unstable governments (where such a fear might be justifiable), people with different perspectives etc. in all these examples you will notice that people tend to have strong fear based reactions that usually (obviously not always) are completely irrational and most likely media driven (not that they're the bad guy either).

Tl;dr (and I'm tired and just getting up for the day) don't be too surprised if an event that any rational person would see has noncontroversial  will be seen as such by the general public. The general public tends to react from the gut, one of the most primitive parts of the mind that has kept us alive till now.

I just read your post in Is this picture disgusting or beautiful?

I totally agree with you that people have subconscious bias and they tend to judge people and products available in market blindly  .

The subconcious bias is ilustrated beautifully in THE ART OF THINKING CLEARLY by Rolf Dobelli