Empirical Relationships Between Beauty and Justice:
Testing Scarry and Elaborating Danto

Rhett Diessner, Lisa Davis, and Brett Toney
Lewis-Clark State College

Elaine Scarry (1999) proposes a correspondence between engagement with beauty and a sense of justice.
Parallel to Scarry, Arthur Danto (2003) posits that 20th century artists avoided producing beautiful works
because of an offended sense of justice. In Study 1, the relationship between justice reasoning (DIT2;
Rest et al., 1999a) and engagement with beauty (Diessner et al., 2008) is examined; there is a significant
raw correlation (r � .23; p � .05; N � 132), which reduced to a nonsignificant r � .01 when Openness
to Experience was partialed out. Study 2 examines the relationship between fairness as a character
strength (cf. Peterson & Seligman, 2004) and engagement with beauty, finding a raw r � .35, p � .001
(N � 113). After partialing out Openness to Experience the r is .25, significant at p � .009. Although
there is no significant association between justice reasoning and engagement with beauty, when
justice/fairness is viewed as a character strength, Scarry’s hypothesis is empirically validated. Thus,
justice-minded artists need not avoid beauty, as beautiful art may increase viewers’ sensitivity to justice.

Keywords: beauty, justice, DIT, character strengths, trait fairness

In 1998 Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics
at Harvard University, offered her provocative Tanner Lectures on
beauty and justice, at Yale University, which were later published
by Princeton University Press as, On Beauty and Being Just
(Scary, 1999). In the first of this tiny text, entitled, “On Beauty and
Being Wrong,” Scarry provides background to understand her
argument concerning beauty and justice. She emphasizes how easy
it is to overlook beauty in the world and to believe something is not
beautiful when it is, and thus be wrong. She goes on to observe that
engagement with beauty leads to a love of conviction, which in its
turn leads to a love of the search for truth; and truth is a necessary
condition for justice (viz., p. 31, p. 53).

The second part of her lovely little tome, which directly ad-
dresses beauty and justice, is entitled, “On Beauty and Being Fair.”
Her argument, which is a bit elusive (Gitlin, 1999, p. 63; Nehamas,
2000; Paden, 2001), follows this line: we love beauty, thus we love
symmetry, and thus we love justice. She invokes “justice as
‘fairness,’ using the widely accepted definition by John Rawls of
fairness as a “symmetry of everyone’s relations to each other’”
(Scarry, 1999, p. 93).

Scarry (1999) describes a political critique of beauty by noting
that some critics contend that beauty attracts and holds our atten-
tion and thus distracts us from unethical social arrangements and
thus makes us indifferent to acting on social justice. She argues
against this view, making the case that beauty is innocent of these
charges, at the very least; rather it is likely that beauty creates a
pressure within us to rectify existing injustices. Scarry also con-
nects beauty and justice linguistically (p. 91 ff), by creatively

exploring etymological links, across a variety of languages, of
beauty as fairness (loveliness of countenance) and of justice as
fairness (an ethical demand). As well, she links beauty and justice
through the concept of “distribution”– beauty encourages the vol-
untary extension of one’s gaze toward finding beauty distributed
across our world, and this sets the conditions to be concerned with
distributive justice. She goes on to argue that all three sites of
beauty—the object, the perceiver, and the act of creation—all
expose the pressure beauty exerts toward ethical equality.

What is the quality of Scarry’s arguments about the relationship
between beauty and justice? Although reviews of her text have
been mixed (Gitlin, 1999; Paden, 2001), we find Nehamas’ (2000)
summary the most balanced and accurate. He asserts that “her
book is a hymn to the love of beauty” analogous to Agathon’s
speech Plato’s Symposium as “a hymn to the beauty of love. Both
are fresh, eccentric, and uncompromising, and both leave you
dazed—suspended between admiration and doubt, eager to praise
and compelled to criticize” (p. 394).

We also feel admiration for and a desire to praise Scarry’s
thoughts on beauty and justice. As social scientists, however, we
would like to postpone criticism of Scarry’s ideas until we have
collected and analyzed data relevant to the relationship between
beauty and justice, which we do below.

Danto: The Fall and Rise of Beauty

Dickie (1997) argues that the decline of beauty, that is, the
decline of its importance to philosophers of aesthetics and to art
critics, began with the 18th century German and British philos-
ophers who, frustrated with their inability to define beauty, and
their recognition of other relevant aesthetic factors (the sub-
lime, the picturesque, the aesthetic attitude, etc.), removed
beauty from its central position in art and aesthetics. By the
20th century beauty was seldom mentioned by philosophers of
aesthetics, and it began to be spurned by artists as well. Arthur

Rhett Diessner, Lisa Davis, and Brett Toney, Psychology Department,
Social Sciences Division, Lewis-Clark State College.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rhett
Diessner, Lewis-Clark State College, 500 8th Avenue, Lewiston, ID
83501–2698. E-mail: diessner@lcsc.edu

Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts © 2009 American Psychological Association
2009, Vol. 3, No. 4, 249 –258 1931-3896/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0014683

249



Danto, Emeritus Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy at Colum-
bia University, has undertaken to explain why many artists
during the 20th century, especially those of the avant-garde,
purposely avoided beauty in their creations (Danto, 1994,
2003). In the early 20th century, many socially conscious and
radical artists purposefully avoided creating anything beautiful,
and viewed a focus on beauty as naı̈ve and irresponsible. Danto
(1994; and cf. Higgins, 1996) notes that the art of the 20th
century is an art of activism, indignation, and accusation. He
believes that modern artists perceive beauty as consoling. Be-
cause of their sense of justice, modern (and post modern) artists
do not want to console—they want to provoke and accuse.
Danto notes that consolatory beauty in art is ethically inconsis-
tent with the indignation necessary for accusatory art, and thus
beauty had to be exiled. Focusing on the late 20th century,
Scarry (1999) appears to agree, by arguing beauty has been
banished from the humanities for the last two decades.

Yet, at the beginning of this 21st century, there has been a call
to bring beauty out of exile and back into art (Danto, 2003)–note
the symposium for philosophers and art critics, in the last year of
the 20th century, was entitled, “Beauty Matters” (viz., Eaton,
1999). Eaton argues that by the end of the 20th century there was
a trend for aesthetic theorists and artists to believe once again that
beauty does matter in art.

Danto (2003) states that from the 18th to early 20th century it
was simply presumed that art should possess beauty. He traces the
downfall of beauty to the Dada movement, which out of a sense of
justice, objected to making anything beautiful for the pleasure of
the social class that was responsible for the First World War. At
the time of World War I artists were deeply unsettled by the
West’s hypocrisy in believing itself to be highly civilized, yet
creating and participating in the greatest carnage in history. Thus,
beauty became suddenly politicized by socially conscious avant-
garde artists in 1915, and abusing beauty was a way for them to
dissociate themselves from a society for which they had great
contempt.

This trend continued through the 20th century–Danto notes that
the Whitney Biennial of 1993 was full of shocking works, that
disturbed the viewers, but which demonstrated the commitment of
American artists to addressing injustices of race, class, and gender.
Danto appears sympathetic to this, implying that victimization is
ugly, and thus to make such works beautiful would be artistically
wrong.

Danto is at pains to show that beauty is not necessary in a work
of art; but that nonetheless, beauty is a fully appropriate goal for
artists whose creative works are internally congruent with a dis-
play of beauty. He describes the spontaneous appearance of im-
provised shrines throughout New York after the 9/11 attack, stat-
ing that this was evidence of a deeply ingrained need for beauty in
human life:

I came to view that in writing about beauty as a philosopher, I was
addressing the deepest kind of issue there is. Beauty is but one of an
immense range of aesthetic qualities, and philosophical aesthetics has
been paralyzed by focusing as narrowly on beauty as it has. But
beauty is the only one of the aesthetic qualities that is also a virtue,
like truth and goodness. It is not simply among the values we live by,
but one of the values that defines what a fully human life means” (p.
14 –15).

Is it necessary to avoid beauty to create a more just society? If
Scarry is correct in saying that experiences of beauty correspond to
an increased awareness of justice, then a conscious abandonment
of beauty may backfire, unintentionally leading to further injus-
tices. We agree with Danto, not all works of art need be beautiful;
on the other hand, beauty need not be the enemy of justice.

The Importance of Beauty in the West

Beauty, since the dawn of Western civilization, has been one of
the three ends of human being: truth, beauty, and the good (Plato,
1937/1892). Of course, in our post modern age, the words and
concepts of truth, beauty, or the good have been kicked off the
pedestal of divine Forms and deconstructed, whereas many intel-
lectuals assume they remain in usage only among the naı̈ve.
Nonetheless, whether one believes truth, beauty and the good to be
objective realities, or simply concepts used to gain power and
oppress others, they continue to provoke and organize the thought
of scholars, artists, and laypersons. In addition, close on the
heels of these three big ends is the concept of justice. Justice is the
prominent moral principle of Plato’s Republic—Socrates argues
justice is the central principle for structuring the order of a city-
state, as well as organizing the individual human psyche (Diessner,
Frost, & Smith, 2004).

Many of the West’s most influential philosophers have argued
for the fundamental importance of beauty: Thomas Aquinas (1260/
1947; see Eco, 1988), Aristotle (ca. 340BCE/2002), Augustine
(400/1964); Dewey (1934/1958), Ficino (1475/1964), (1835/
1993), Kant (1790/1987), Plotinus, 250/1964, Santayana (1896/
1961), and Schopenhauer (1819/1969). Philosophers have ad-
dressed both beauty in art and beauty in nature (Beardsley, 1975;
Croce, 1902/1960; Hofstadter & Kuhns, 1964; Mothersill, 1984;
Sheppard, 1987). Moral beauty (cf. Haidt, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2006;
Haidt & Keltner, 2004; Keltner & Haidt, 2003), in the context of
the beauty of human virtue has been emphasized by Aristotle.
Aristotle (2002) argued that the end (the goal) of all virtues is
beauty. Danto (2003) briefly refers to moral beauty as well (p. 55).

The Importance of Beauty Across Cultures

In beauty happily I walk.

With beauty before me I walk.

With beauty behind me I walk.

With beauty below me I walk.

With beauty above me I walk.

With beauty all around me I walk.

(Navajo/Diné prayer; Quoted in Jones, 1951, p. 12)

It appears that every culture has standards of beauty; beauty is
a universal value (Haidt & Keltner, 2004; Washburn, 2006). There
are at least two broadly influential sources for the importance of
beauty across cultures. One is our evolutionary past: perceiving
aspects of nature as beautiful appears to have adaptive or survival
value (Averill, Stanat, & More, 1998; Etcoff, 2000; Richards,
1998). Another source can be found in the spiritual traditions and
religions of humankind. Spirituality and religion have influenced
beauty in art from ancient through modern times (cf. Mark Tobey
in Dahl, 1984; Kandinsky, 1912/1947). The concept of beauty is

250 DIESSNER, DAVIS, AND TONEY



ubiquitous in the sacred texts of the world’s religions, commonly
embedded in the concept of glory. “Great beauty” is a direct
synonym of “glory” (Gove, 1993, p. 967). Reference to beauty and
glory are found in the Hindu Bhagavad-Gita (Arjuna & Krishna,
ca. 3000BCE/2000); in the Psalms (King David, ca. 950BCE/n.d.)
of Judaism; in the Buddhist Dhammapada (Buddha, ca. 300BCE/
1993); in the Christian Bible (John, 1:14, KJV, ca. 50CE/n.d.); in
Islam’s Qur’án (Muhammad, ca. 630CE/2000); and in the Bahá’ı́
writings (Bahá’u’lláh, 1935/1976).

Assessing Appreciation of and Engagement With Beauty

There is very little empirical work indexed by PsycINFO, ERIC,
or SocINDEX on engagement with beauty, other than a wide
variety of studies on issues of human physical/cosmetic beauty.
One exception is Milton Rokeach’s (1974) and his colleagues (cf.
Mayton, 1993) work on human values. Rokeach framed a world of
beauty as a human terminal value, and found that Americans
considered it to be among the least important of values in the late
1960s and early 1970s. This finding by Rokeach parallels Danto’s
(2003) and Scarry’s (1999) concerns about the lack of interest in
beauty in philosophy and the humanities in the 20th century.
Humanistic and existential psychologists have addressed the im-
portance of beauty, but typically without a systematically empir-
ical focus (Maslow, 1964, 1970; May, 1985).

Empirically oriented personality psychologists Costa and
McCrae (1992), creators of the NEO-PI scale which measures the
Five Factor Model of personality, have framed Openness to Aes-
thetics as a specific trait within the broader trait of Openness to
Experience. Their Openness to Aesthetics facet scale measures
appreciation for beauty in art. Research using this facet scale has
established a wide variety of findings (Brown, Wise, & Costa,
1996; Griffin, & McDermott, 1998; Lusebrink, 1995; McCrae,
2007; Perrine, & Brodersen, 2005; Thompson, Brossart, & Car-
lozzi, 2002).

Studies using the Engagement with Beauty Scale (EBS; Diess-
ner, Parsons, Solom, Frost, & Davidson, 2008), which has three
subscales measuring engagement with natural beauty, artistic
beauty and moral beauty, have shown that engagement with beauty
has medium to high positive correlations with the traits of gratitude
and spiritual transcendence and a low negative correlation with
endorsement of materialistic values. A known-groups study dem-
onstrated that the EBS Artistic Beauty subscale differentiated
college students taking courses in the arts from those that were not.
In a beauty intervention study (Diessner, Rust, Solom, Frost, &
Parsons, 2006), it was shown that college students who partici-
pated in focused engagement with beauty exercises significantly
increased their level of engagement with beauty. That study also
demonstrated that engagement with beauty is significantly corre-
lated with the trait of hope.

Cattron’s (2008) study with the EBS found that engagement
with beauty significantly correlates with mindfulness (a height-
ened state of being in the present) (N � 134; r � .27 total score,
p � .002). He also showed that engagement with artistic beauty
correlates higher with mindfulness (r � .29, p � .001), than do
engagement with natural beauty (r � .21, p � .02) or moral beauty
(r � .18, p � .04). International studies (Richel et al., 2008;
Susnjic & Diessner, 2008) using translations of the EBS in Iran,
Samoa, Germany, Cyprus, and Croatia, have shown it to maintain

fairly high internal consistency across translations (�s for total
score from .85–.94). Such high alphas indicate that engagement
with natural beauty (�s from .66 –.85), with artistic beauty (�s
from .73–.92), and with moral beauty (�s from .85–.92), are
coherent and meaningful concepts in cultures from Europe, the
Mediterranean, the Middle East, and the South Pacific.

In the context of the positive psychology movement, Peterson
and Seligman (2004) have developed the 240 item Values in
Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS), which provides a ranking
of 24 character strengths. One such strength is labeled “apprecia-
tion of beauty and excellence,” and it is measured by a 10-item
subscale of the VIA-IS. A study by Peterson, Park, and Seligman
(2006) shows that appreciation of beauty may be one of the most
important and effective character strengths involved in gaining
satisfaction with life after overcoming depression and other psy-
chological disorders. Riddle and Michel-Riddle (2007) used the
VIA-IS to study a small sample (N � 21) of male art therapists and
art therapy students (they selected men as an unusual group, as the
field is apparently 94% women). They found that the two highest
ranked character strengths for this sample, of the 24 strengths
measured on the VIA-IS, were “curiosity and interest in the world”
and “appreciation of beauty and excellence.” On a biological note,
Steger, Hicks, Kashdan, Krueger, and Bouchard (2007), in a study
using the VIA-IS with N � 336 twins, found that monozygotic
twins showed a correlation of .56 with the appreciation of beauty
and excellence subscale, but dizygotics had a correlation of .03.
Such correlations were typical across all 24 VIA-IS character
strengths, indicating levels of heritability that are characteristic for
most personality traits.

Assessing a Sense of Justice

Psychologists have approached assessment of the human sense
of justice primarily in two ways. One method has been to assess
the ability to think and reason about justice, pioneered by Piaget,
and elaborated extensively by Kohlberg (1984; Colby & Kohlberg,
1987; and cf. Gibbs et al., 1984) and Rest (1979; Rest, Narvaez,
Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999b). The other approach is to view justice
as a personality trait or as the character strength of fairness
(Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Lee & Ashton, 2004, 2007).

Kohlberg (1984), following the lead of Piaget, defined a six
stage structural model of the development of the ability to reason
with justice. In Kohlberg’s methodology (Colby & Kohlberg,
1987), interviewers present moral dilemmas to subjects and ask
them their solutions; their responses are recorded, transcribed and
scored for stage level. James Rest (1979) developed a multiple
choice format for assessing justice reasoning, the Defining Issues
Test (DIT), which is based on Kohlberg’s theory and presents
subjects with moral dilemmas similar to the ones that Kohlberg
used. The subjects read the dilemmas, and then mark their pre-
ferred choice of solutions. The choice of options, following the
dilemmas on the DIT, represent Kohlberg’s stages, and thus pro-
vide the researcher with a percentage score of how often the
subjects selected principled level choices. With both Kohlberg’s
and Rest’s approaches the individual’s level of justice reasoning is
determined. There is a large empirical track record, as well as
theoretical arguments, concerning the relevance and meaningful-
ness of their research programs (Kohlberg, 1981, 1984; Rest et al.,
1999b).

251BEAUTY AND JUSTICE



The personality approach to assessing a sense of justice views
justice as the trait of fairness. The trait of fairness includes such
attributes as being committed to fairness in social relations, being
sensitized to issues of social and distributive justice, being trust-
worthy, being civic minded, honoring one’s promises, not cheat-
ing, not stealing, following rules, and believing in equality and
equity. The Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS;
Peterson & Seligman, 2004) measures such a trait, which they call
the character strength of fairness or equity. Likewise, Lee and
Ashton (2004, 2007) have developed a facet scale which they
named Justice, as one of the 24 personality facets measured by
their HEXACO Personality Inventory (HEXACO-PI).

Purpose of the Present Studies

The main purpose of the two studies reported below is to
examine whether or not there is empirical support for Scarry’s
argument that beauty and justice are related. Study 1 will examine
whether there is a significant positive relationship between en-
gagement with beauty and justice reasoning. Study 2 will examine
whether there is a significant positive relationship between en-
gagement with beauty and the character strength of fairness.

This appears to be fresh empirical territory—the PsycINFO,
ERIC, and SocINDEX databases reveal no published empirical
studies concerning the relationship between engagement with
beauty and justice, other than related to issues of human physical/
cosmetic beauty. For instance, Forbes, Collinsworth, Jobe, Braun,
and Wise (2007) found that oppression/injustice and hostility
toward women correlated with endorsement of Western physical
beauty ideals; and Callan, Powell, and Ellard (2007) showed that
participants judged the accidental death of an attractive woman as
more tragic and unfair than the death of a less attractive woman
(they also reviewed research relevant to injustice and beauty, such
as physically attractive individuals being perceived as more qual-
ified to obtain jobs, getting better health care services, receiving
more lenient criminal sentences, and being offered help more
often). However, it appears there are no published studies exam-
ining engagement with beauty in general (such as natural beauty,
artistic beauty, or moral beauty) and its relationship to either
justice reasoning or to the character strength of fairness. The two
studies below remedy those lacunae.

Study 1: Engagement With Beauty and Justice Reasoning

The introduction to this study is contained in the above general
introductory section.

Method

Participants

The participants were a convenience sample of N � 132 under-
graduates at Lewis-Clark State College, in Lewiston, Idaho, re-
cruited in Fall, 2007 from introductory, developmental and edu-
cational psychology classes. There was wide diversity of majors in
those classes: 28% teacher education, 24% social science, 17%
natural science, 17% humanities, 4% vo-tech, 4% undecided, and
6% nonreporting. The participants had a mean age of 22.4 (SD �
7.15; range 18 –54); were 58% women; 3% African, 5% Asian,

75% Euro, 12% Latino, 3% marked “mixed,” and 1% Native
American.

Measures

Engagement with beauty scale. The EBS is a 14-item self-
report scale describing various levels of cognitive and emotional
engagement concerning natural, artistic, and moral beauty. Al-
though there are other instruments that measure appreciation of
beauty as a subscale, the EBS is the only scale extant that is
devoted to measuring the trait of engagement with beauty.

The EBS uses a 7-point Likert scale ranging from “very unlike
me” to “very much like me,” on questions such as, “When per-
ceiving beauty in nature I feel changes in my body, such as a lump
in my throat, an expansion in my chest, faster heartbeat, or other
bodily responses,” “When perceiving beauty in a work of art I feel
something like a spiritual experience, perhaps a sense of oneness
or being united with the universe or a love of the entire world,” and
“When perceiving an act of moral beauty I find that I desire to
become a better person” (Diessner et al., 2008).

The EBS provides a total scale score and also has three sub-
scales tapping engagement with natural beauty (four items), artistic
beauty (four items), and moral beauty (six items). Studies of the
EBS with an American sample (N � 206; 58% female) yielded a
total score internal consistency of .91, and test–retest reliability of
.79; EBS Natural Beauty subscale � of .80; Artistic Beauty sub-
scale � from .88; and the EBS Moral Beauty subscale � from .89;
test–retest reliability correlations ranged from .67 to .79 on the
subscales. Factor analytic studies (EFA and CFA) and goodness of
fit indices show the three subscales reasonably fit a 3-factor model
(Diessner et al., 2008). International studies with translations of the
EBS, in Iran, Samoa, Germany, Cyprus, and Croatia, have shown
it to maintain fairly high internal consistency across translations
(�s from .85–.94) and to have a similar factor structure across
cultures (Richel et al., 2008; Susnjic & Diessner, 2008). A variety
of concurrent and predictive studies have shown the promising
validity of the EBS (Diessner et al., 2008, 2006). In this current
study the EBS total score had a Cronbach’s alpha of .88; the
natural beauty subscale’s was .75; artistic beauty .90; and the
moral beauty subscale’s alpha was .86.

Defining issues test-2. The revised Defining Issues Test
(DIT2; Bebeau & Thoma, 2003) is a shortened, revised, and
improved version of the original DIT (Rest, 1979). Both the DIT
and DIT2 consist of several moral dilemmas, each of which is
followed by multiple-choice questions that are keyed to Kohl-
berg’s (1984) stages of justice reasoning. The results of the DIT
produces a P-score, which is a percentage of items ranked as
highly important by the participant, that are at the principled
(postconventional) level of justice reasoning. The DIT2 offers a
new score, the N2, which integrates the subject’s P-score with the
degree to which the subject rated lower stage items (personal
interest items) below higher justice reasoning stage postconven-
tional items. Both the DIT and DIT2 have a wide range of validity
indices (Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, & Bebeau, 1999a; Rest et al.,
1999b). The DIT2 has shown moderate internal consistency, with
a Cronbach’s alpha ranging from .65 (Crowson & DeBacker,
2008) to .81 (Rest et al., 1999a), for the N2 score. In our current
study the alpha, for the N � 132 valid N2 scores, was .74.

252 DIESSNER, DAVIS, AND TONEY



NEO-PI-R. The NEO-PI-R (NEO Personality Inventory–
Revised), self-report Form S (Costa & McCrae, 1992) is a classic
measure in personality assessment, providing scores for each of the
domains of the five-factor model theory of personality: Neuroti-
cism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and
Conscientiousness. These domain scores show internal consis-
tency coefficients from .86 to .95. Multiyear test–retest reliability
coefficients are in the range of .51 to .83; each domain has a
variety of facet scales within them, with internal consistency
coefficients ranging from .56 to .90. Costa and McCrae report a
variety of validity studies relating the NEO-PI-R to other person-
ality inventories and projective measures. For the domain that is of
interest in our current study, Openness to Experience, Costa and
McCrae report an alpha of .87, and for the Aesthetic facet scale a
.76. In our current study, the Openness to Experience scale had an
alpha of .84, and the Aesthetic facet scale’s alpha was .81.

Procedure

Half the subjects completed the EBS first, the other half
the DIT2 first, to avoid sequencing effects. A week after taking the
EBS and DIT2, N � 111 of these same subjects completed the
NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992). The participants were given
course credit to complete the scales; the study was approved by the
LCSC Human Subjects committee, and all APA ethical research
standards were adhered to.

Design of Statistical Analysis

The two main variables under study, engagement with beauty as
shown by total score on the EBS, and justice reasoning as shown
by N2 score of the DIT2, will be correlated using a Pearson
product–moment correlation. As the trait of openness is known to
influence both appreciation of beauty, and justice reasoning, a
partial correlation will be computed, controlling for Openness to
Experience, as measured by the NEO-PI.

Results

EBS total score showed an r � .18 ( p � .05) with the DIT2 N2
score; additionally, the DIT2 N2 score correlated with the EBS
natural beauty subscale, r � .20 ( p � .03), with the EBS artistic
beauty subscale, r � .18 ( p � .05), and with the EBS moral beauty
subscale, r � .05 (n.s.). However, after partialing out the Openness
to Experience factor of the NEO-PI-R (N � 111) the correlation
dropped to a nonsignificant r � .01.

As a psychometric aside, the EBS total score showed a .69
correlation with the Aesthetic facet scale of the NEO-PI-R (Costa
& McCrae, 1992); and the EBS natural beauty subscale correlated
.54, the EBS artistic beauty subscale .66, and the EBS moral
beauty subscale .46 with the Aesthetics facet.

Discussion

Initially it appeared that Scarry’s hypothesis was somewhat
vindicated by the positive and significant, though small, correla-
tion between engagement with beauty and justice reasoning. How-
ever, the major trait, Openness to Experience is known to correlate
with the endorsement of both appreciation of beauty and justice/
equality; for example, political liberals score much higher on

Openness scales, and endorse appreciation of beauty and equality,
much more than political conservatives (viz., Haidt, 2007; Haidt &
Graham, 2007). Therefore, it was deemed important to examine if
there was any relationship between beauty and justice reasoning
after partialing out the influence of Openness to Experience. After
partialing out Openness, the correlation between engagement with
beauty and justice reasoning dropped to .01, which is essentially
no relationship at all. So, was Scarry wrong? The DIT2 specifi-
cally measures the ability to reason, in the Kohlbergian tradition,
about justice-oriented issues. Perhaps, rather than reasoning abil-
ity, Scarry’s hypothesis is relevant to personality, to the trait of
being fair, of being oriented to and cherishing justice. We decided
to further test her hypothesis by examining the relationship be-
tween engagement with beauty and fairness as a character strength.
Below, in Study 2, we do just that.

We expected that the DIT2, a measure of moral/justice reason-
ing, would correlate higher with the EBS subscale of moral beauty
engagement, than with the EBS’s artistic or natural beauty sub-
scales. However, this was not the case—there was no significant
relationship between moral/justice reasoning and engagement with
moral beauty; but there were significant correlations between
justice reasoning and engagement with both artistic beauty and
with natural beauty. Could it be that persons with a high level of
justice reasoning tend not to look for the inner beauty in others, but
they do seek beauty in art and nature? Future research on this topic
appears warranted.

In the original technical paper on the EBS (Diessner et al.,
2008), concurrent validity between the NEO-PI-R Aesthetic facet
scale (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the EBS was not reported. Our
data in this study show a correlation of .69 between the EBS total
score and the Aesthetics facet scale; this correlation is high enough
to indicate that the two scales may be measuring something quite
similar, but low enough to show they are not measuring something
identical. As the NEO-PI-R Aesthetic facet scale has eight items,
of which 7.5 refer to art [music, dance, poetry, art], and half of a
question refers to patterns in nature, and has no item concerning
moral beauty, it is not surprising that the EBS engagement with art
subscale correlates higher with the Aesthetic facet (r � .66) than
do the natural beauty (r � .54) or moral beauty (r � .46) subscales
of the EBS.

Study 2: Engagement With Beauty and the
Trait of Fairness

There appear to be no published studies which examine the
empirical relationship between measures of engagement with
beauty and the trait (or character strength) of fairness. We predict
a moderately high correlation between the EBS and the IPIP-VIA
Fairness scale. To address discriminant validity, we will correlate
two character strengths that we anticipate would have low, non-
significant, correlations with the EBS–the IPIP-VIA Modesty/
Humility scale and the IPIP-VIA Industry/Perseverance/
Persistence scale. See the above general introductory section for
background to this study.

Method

Participants

The participants were a convenience sample of N � 120 under-
graduates at Lewis-Clark State College, in Lewiston, Idaho, re-

253BEAUTY AND JUSTICE



cruited from Spring, 2008 introductory, developmental and edu-
cational psychology classes. There was wide diversity of majors in
those classes: 24% teacher education, 21.5% social sciences,
21.5% natural sciences, 19% humanities, 7.4% vo-tech, 5.8%
undecided, and .8% left it blank. The participants had a mean age
of 22.8 (SD � 6.7; range 17–55); and are 65% women; 4.1%
Asian, 81.8% Euro, 3.3% Latino, 4.1% marked “mixed,” 3.3%
Native American, 2.5% other, and .8% no response.

Measures

Engagement with beauty scale. See above, in Study 1, for a
description of this scale. In this Study 2, the EBS showed Cron-
bach’s alphas of .89 for total score; .79 for the natural beauty
subscale; .85 for the artistic beauty subscale; and .87 for the moral
beauty subscale.

Defining issues test-2. See above, in Study 1, for a description
of this test. In this current sample, with an N � 42, the Cronbach’s
alpha was .80.

IPIP-FFM-Openness to Experience scale. Rather than use the
expensive NEO-PI-R, to get results for a single domain scale
(Openness to Experience), we used the International Personality
Item Pool, Five Factor Model, 20 item Openness to Experience
scale (Goldberg, 1999; Goldberg et al., 2006; http://ipip.ori.org/).
Saucier and Goldberg (2002) report, with an N � 501 from a
community sample, a corrected correlation of .92 between the
20-item Openness scale of the IPIP FFM measure and the NEO-
PI-R Openness domain scale. They also report a coefficient alpha
of .89 for this Openness scale, and in our current study, we found
an alpha of .82.

IPIP-VIA fairness scale. This is a 9-item, Likert response,
free-use scale from the IPIP site (Goldberg et al., 2006; http://
ipip.ori.org/) that measures the trait-like character strength of “fair-
ness” or equity, and has a reported Cronbach’s alpha of .70. In the
study reported here, the scale had an alpha of .74. The IPIP-VIA
fairness scale is an analogue scale of the fairness/equity subscale
of Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) Values in Action scale (VIA).
The IPIP-VIA fairness scale and the original VIA fairness scale
contain items similar to, “I am committed to principles of justice
and equality,” “I treat all people equally,” and “I believe that
everyone should have a say.” Peterson and Seligman (2004) define
the character strength of fairness by referring to an “individual’s
treatment of other people in similar and identical ways—not letting
one’s personal feelings or issues bias decisions about others,” and
can refer to either a “radical equality of treatment or a more
nuanced equity of treatment” (p. 361).

IPIP-VIA modesty/humility scale. This is a 9-item, Likert re-
sponse, free-use scale from the IPIP site (Goldberg et al., 2006;
http://ipip.ori.org/) that measures the trait-like character strength of
modesty and humility, and has a reported Cronbach’s alpha of .70.
In the study reported here, the scale had an alpha of .68. The
IPIP-VIA modesty/humility scale is an analogue scale of the
modesty/humility subscale of Peterson and Seligman’s (2004)
Values in Action scale (VIA). Although there is little empirical
validity evidence published concerning this specific subscale, a
variety of studies are showing the VIA’s promising validity (Park,
Peterson, & Seligman, 2004, 2006; Peterson, Park, & Seligman,
2006).

IPIP-VIA industry/perseverance/persistence scale. This is an
8-item, Likert response, free-use scale from the IPIP site (Gold-
berg et al., 2006; http://ipip.ori.org/) that measures the trait-like
character strength of industry, perseverance, and persistence, and
has a reported Cronbach’s alpha of .81. In the study reported here,
the scale had an alpha of .74. The IPIP-VIA industry/perseverance/
persistence scale is an analogue scale of the industry/perseverance/
persistence subscale of Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) Values in
Action scale (VIA). Although there is little empirical validity
evidence published concerning this specific subscale, a variety of
studies are showing the VIA’s promising validity (Park, Peterson,
& Seligman, 2004, 2006; Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2006).

Procedure

The EBS, IPIP-VIA Fairness scale, IPIP-Openness to Experi-
ence Scale, and a political affiliation measure (which will not be
reported on in this study) were randomly ordered into packets (to
prevent any sequencing effect) and completed by the participants
during class time. A subset of N � 42 then completed the DIT2
two weeks later. Four weeks after that N � 91 of the original
subjects completed the IPIP-VIA Modesty/Humility scale and the
IPIP-VIA Industry/Perseverance/Persistence scale; half the sub-
jects completed the Modesty scale first, the other half the Industry
scale, to prevent sequencing effects. The participants were given
course credit to complete the scales; the study was approved by the
LCSC Human Subjects committee, and all APA ethical research
standards were adhered to.

Design of Statistical Analysis

The two main variables in Study 2, engagement with beauty as
shown by total score on the EBS, and the character strength of
fairness, as measured by the IPIP-VIA Fairness scale, will be
correlated using a Pearson product–moment correlation. As the
trait of openness is known to influence both appreciation of beauty,
and endorsement of justice, a partial correlation will be computed,
controlling for Openness to Experience. To examine whether a
positive response style could account for finding a relationship
between engagement with beauty and the character strength of
fairness (i.e., someone who indiscriminately endorses any and all
character strengths), we will correlate two other character
strengths—modesty/humility and industry/perseverance—with the
EBS, as measured by the IPIP-VIA Modesty/Humility and the
IPIP-VIA Industry/Perseverance/Persistence scales.

Results

The correlation between the EBS total score and the IPIP-VIA
Fairness scale was r � .35, p � .001 (N � 113); after partialing out
Openness to Experience the r dropped to .25, but was still signif-
icant at p � .009. The three EBS subscales all showed significant
correlations with the IPIP-IVA Fairness scale: natural beauty r �
.32 ( p � .001); artistic beauty r � .29 ( p � .002); moral beauty
r � .24 ( p � .01). However, after partialing out Openness to
Experience, only the engagement with natural beauty subscale
retained statistical significance: natural beauty r � .22 ( p � .02);
artistic beauty r � .18 ( p � .06); moral beauty r � .17 ( p � .07).

254 DIESSNER, DAVIS, AND TONEY



The EBS total score showed a statistically nonsignificant r of
.07 ( p � .50; N � 91) with the IPIP-VIA Modesty/Humility scale;
and likewise with the IPIP-VIA Industry/Perseverance/Persistence
scale, r � .15 ( p � .16; N � 90).

The correlation between the DIT2 N2 score and the EBS, for an
N � 42 subsample, was .37 ( p � .02); but after partialing out
Openness to Experience, the r dropped to a statistically nonsignif-
icant .26 ( p � .10). The correlation between the DIT N2 score and
the IPIP-VIA Fairness scale was a nonsignificant .13 ( p � .40).

Discussion of Study 2

Scarry (1999) may be right. If her hypothesis about the connec-
tion between beauty and justice is referring to the personality trait
of being fair, then these data support her argument. The .35
correlation between the EBS and the IPIP-VIA fairness scale is
medium-sized and significant; and even after partialing out the
Openness factor, the relatively small correlation of .25 remains
significant ( p � .009). Thus, there does appear to be a small
relationship between engagement with beauty and the character
strength of fairness.

Although the correlation between justice reasoning, as measured
by the DIT2, and engagement with beauty, was higher in Study 2
than Study 1 (.37 vs. .18), after partialing out the broad trait of
Openness to Experience, it was not statistically significant. There-
fore, we tentatively conclude that justice reasoning and engage-
ment with beauty are unrelated. To be confident that people
scoring high on the EBS are not simply positive people in general,
who tend to endorse character strengths in general, we also ad-
ministered to IPIP-VIA subscales that measure modesty/humility
and industry/perseverance. We hypothesized that these two traits
are unrelated to engagement with beauty, and the data supports
that; both had very low nonsignificant correlations with the EBS
total score. This indicates that those scoring high on engagement
with beauty do not indiscriminately score high across a range of
desirable character strengths. It adds discriminant validity to the
claim that fairness as a character strength has a meaningful rela-
tionship with engagement with beauty.

General Discussion

What is the difference between justice reasoning and the per-
sonality trait of fairness? Justice reasoning, as measured by Kohl-
berg (1984) and Rest (1979), has its roots in Jean Piaget’s para-
digmatic approach to psychology. This approach, typically called
cognitive-development in English language textbooks, was re-
ferred to by Piaget as genetic epistemology. The emphasis in
justice reasoning is upon cognition, logic, and reason. Traits,
however, are not focused on our reasoning ability, but rather are
dispositions to feel and to act. A trait is a way of being. The ability
to reason and the disposition to feel and act are two different
things. On the other hand, we believe in a unified psyche, in which
the fundamental abilities to think, emote and will, are in constant
dynamic interaction, and are inseparable (Diessner, 2001; Diessner
et al., 2004). Nonetheless, reasoning can be differentiated from
feelings and action. Traits are ontologically closer to the core of
human being than is thinking or reasoning. Heidegger trumped
Descartes in arguing that ontology must precede epistemology—
existence is logically before thinking. The major finding in the two

studies presented here is that engagement with beauty is signifi-
cantly related to the trait of fairness, but not related to justice
reasoning. Engagement with beauty appears more closely related
to emotions, feelings, and patterns of behavior, than it is to
reasoning. Therefore, to the degree that Elaine Scarry views justice
as the trait of fairness more than as an ability to reason about
fairness, the data in these studies support her argument. She does
appear to view justice as something like a trait, as she emphasizes
motivation toward justice, and specifically that engagement with
beauty leads to “attention to justice” (1999, p. 86). Again, we are
not encouraging an artificial separation between thinking and
feeling, or between reasoning and traits, no doubt they interpene-
trate in vivo. Sherblom (2004) must think so, as he emphasizes the
moral reasoning aspect of the character strength of fairness.

These studies have important implications concerning the role
of beauty for 21st century artists. As Danto (2003) has described,
Western artists, especially the avant-garde, spurned beauty based
on their own notions of justice. The artists reasoned (or felt or
intuited) that purposefully producing works of beauty was to cater
to a bourgeois class that was destroying our world both socially
and materially, and to offer beauty to the public was placating
forces of evil. Producing works that shocked and confused was a
form of justice-activism among artists. Danto concludes, however,
that beauty still has its place; he makes it clear that art can be
created that is not beautiful and still have artistic merit. However,
he also emphasizes that the goal of beauty in a work of art is
perfectly acceptable, and not necessarily socially irresponsible on
the part of the artist.

The findings in our studies here—that engagement with beauty
and fairness as a personality trait are significantly correlated—
implies that when artists create works of beauty they may be
enhancing the viewing public’s development of the trait of fair-
ness, especially when that beauty is internally appropriate to the
subject matter of the painting (viz., Danto, chapter 4, “Internal and
External Beauty,” 2003). There certainly is ugliness in injustice,
and thus Danto would support the idea that when painting about
issues of injustice, it is perfectly appropriate to paint a nonbeautiful
painting. On the other hand, Danto would also agree that a wide
range of issues can be appropriately portrayed with beauty without
artists compromising their integrity or setting aside their social
consciousness. Danto uses the Vietnam War Memorial, designed
by Maya Lin, as an example—the memorial is about “healing,”
and the beauty that is internal to it supports that meaning.

That beauty and justice go hand-in-hand indicates that an art
education that encourages the creation of beauty does not work
against creating a sense of justice in art students. In fact, it implies
that art teachers who emphasize the creation of beauty in works of
art may actually be setting the conditions for their students to
further develop their sense of justice, fairness, and equality. It also
implies that observers of beauty in art (as well as observers of
natural beauty, and human inner beauty) will have their character
strength of fairness reinforced and encouraged. We are not stating
that simply increasing one’s engagement with beauty is sufficient
to create justice–Howard Gardner (1999) has pointed out that the
Nazis valued beautiful works of art, but nonetheless were one of
the worst perpetrators of injustice in the history of our planet.
However, as it seems likely that most events, processes, and
occurrences are multicausal, beauty may at least be one of the

255BEAUTY AND JUSTICE



forces of the universe that move us toward social justice and intra-
and interpersonal fairness.

The studies reported here are simple correlational studies; they
are preliminary studies examining whether there is any empirical
support for Scarry’s argument that engagement with beauty is
related to the disposition to act justly. Future experimental designs
that could determine causality (does beauty cause justice, or justice
cause beauty?), or structural equation modeling to examine causal
pathways, are warranted. Science, including psychological social
science, requires replication, and the external validity of the find-
ings in the studies reported here would be enhanced by studying
participants in a wider range of ethnic and geographical diversity.

We will end this paper with the end of Danto’s Abuse of Beauty
(2003); the last three sentences of that book are:

Beauty is an option for art and not a necessary condition. But it is not
an option for life. It is a necessary condition for life as we would want
to live it. That is why beauty, unlike the other aesthetic qualities, the
sublime included, is a value (p. 160).

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Received September 20, 2008
Revision received November 10, 2008

Accepted November 10, 2008 �

258 DIESSNER, DAVIS, AND TONEY