I wanted to write this entry after reading a couple stories in an online paper but now I’ve left it so long I can’t remember what paper it was, or which story. But I’ll just say stuff without references or proper quotes, and you’ll just have to trust me on it.

Anyway, I was reading about some kind of murder, and they caught the guy, and the family had said how surprised they were when they saw how normal the accused appeared to be, how they expected the monster that killed their relative to be monstrous in appearance as well as in deed.

And that does appear to be the case in general, isn’t it? People want the people who do ugly things to be ugly themselves. Of course, it always seems that these murderers are described as “normal, guy next door” sort of way, which probably is what scares people the most since you aren’t on your guard with such people. So who are they on their guard against? Ugly people? Those who they expect to be more likely to commit such things, despite the ceaseless “normal guy” criminals popping up.

But this is hardly surprising, as psychology has taught me that attractive people are more often attributed virtuous characteristics, and the unattractive attributed the uglier characteristics. I’ve felt this myself, well, some might argue in favour of prudence over a general attack on my character, but when you move into a house with someone who then has the landlord affix a deadbolt lock on her door, but not yours, I take that as a suggestion of what kind of person she thinks I am. (and to top off that story, her non-rent-paying boyfriend, who ceaselessly came over, barged into my room while sleeping to borrow something, hmph)

The Just-World view is also fairly prevalent, which goes along the sensible line that good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people. Most people, to one degree or another, believe something like this, as a the alternative Shit-World view (I dunno what to call it) is too depressing to contemplate. However, it leads to interesting fallacies and inferences, like if something bad happens to you, you must be a bad person, since bad things happen to bad people, and somehow I feel that ties into the attractiveness bit. Being ugly I think is generally considered to be bad, as in, who would opt to actually be described as ugly? So if you are ugly, then you must be bad.

Hmm, sorry.. as I was thinking about this topic and what I would write, I thought I had a lot of insightful things to say, but I think I’ve forgotten some of it, and it was probably crap anyway.