Spring 2026 Volwiler Lecture with Anjan Chatterjee, MD

The Neuroscience and Ethics of Beauty and Human Appearance:

Beauty has a magical hold on us. It delivers enormous pleasure and is also deeply disturbing. I will discuss beauty in human faces, where aesthetic and moral values are conflated in problematic ways. The neural and behavioral responses to beauty are automatic with unfortunate consequence as observed in the beauty-is-good stereotype and a corollary facial anomaly-is-bad (scars, burns, etc.) bias. The neural and behavioral expression of this bias reveals forms of dehumanization. I will consider reasons why we might not despair at the prevalence of this stereotype and discuss how biology and culture interact to suggest mitigation strategies.