你是否曾见过一个美丽的电视广告，却因为知道这是一个广告而毁了它?你是否曾经因为一场音乐表演而感到高兴，结果却发现歌手是在对口型?你有没有看过一幅融化人心的画，然后发现它是假的?

Such experiences are common but strange. Like jilted lovers, we feel played. Something about the origins or intentions behind the pieces ruins them.

但这是正确的回应吗?从另一个角度来看，可以说:“好吧，我认为贪婪的石油公司终究可以做出漂亮的广告。”或者，“这仍然是一首很棒的歌!”或者，“哇，复制品真的和原版一样好。”

My occasion for raising this puzzle is the heated discussion surrounding the famous/infamous Fearless Girl statue, which appeared in the New York Financial District on March 7 of this year, a day before International Women’s Day.

At first sight, Fearless Girl, standing across from Wall Street’s iconic Charging Bull, is a powerful symbol of opposition to patriarchal values, which are at their worst in the male-dominated world of high finance. But if you look to her origins, you might experience an astonishing flip of perspective.

在承认《无畏的女孩》的原始视觉力量的同时，我们应该面对一些事实。首先，《无畏女孩》受大型金融机构道富环球顾问公司(State Street Global Advisors, SSgA)委托，作为一种推广股指的方式;the advertisement campaign she’s a part of was developed by the advertising giantMcCann. That index, to be fair, aggregates companies that do more for gender equity, and its ticker is SHE. But many people’s admiration of Fearless Girl dwindles on finding out she owes her existence to the intention to sell a stock index. Second, Charging Bull was never corporate art in the first place.Arturo Di Modica, a Sicilian immigrant, created it at his own expense after the stock market crash of 1987, in order to celebrate the dynamism of these United States. Those in charge of the New York Stock Exchange didn’t even like it at first and initially had it removed.

So now you may have that feeling again, like you just got played. The best artistic icon of gender equity in years is hawking stock. Fearless Girl is still a solid work of art—and congratulations toKristen Visbalfor creating her—but SHE seems not as fantastic as we thought.

Two questions now arise, given all that’s been said; one is descriptive and the other normative.

Descriptively: what is the psychology of liking or loathing artwork because of its origins?

Normatively: is it right, rational, or reasonable to be so affected by the origins of a work?

The most compelling work in psychology I know of concerning the descriptive question comes from Paul Bloom’s lab at Yale. In discussing why authentic paintings are valued above convincing forgeries, George Newman and Bloomsuggesttwo mechanisms. First, there is aperformance方面:作品的创作方式被视为其本身的表现，这种表现可以更好也可以更差(单纯的复制是不令人印象深刻的)。Second, the psychological mechanisms ofcontagionseem to be at play. Human contagion detection evolved to keep us away from harmful, body-polluting substances. But those mechanisms easily transfer to other domains and easily attach to objects associated with iniquitous actions. Would you buy a stolen laptop at a good price? If not, that might be because your contagion system marks that laptop astainted. Similarly, a piece of art might seem tainted, if it was created with deceptive intent.

I think both mechanisms are involved in people’s reappraisal of Fearless Girl. When I first saw the image of her facing the Bull, I imagined a lone artist working in secret and then courageously placing her work opposite the Bull in the middle of the night. Frankly, though Fearless Girl is still a powerful piece, theperformance现在我知道她得到了一家金融机构的支持，所以创造她的想法就不那么令人印象深刻了。但传染的因素可能更为根本。Fearless Girl seems tainted—bycorporate feminism, some say. She’s bespotted in people’s minds by the dirty and deceptive corporate intentions that went into creating her.

To turn to the normative question, are werightto respond as we do to origins and intentions? I think the psychology just reviewed puts us in a better position to address this question.

My view is that it makes sense to value the performance involved in creating a work. Creation can be beautiful and dramatic, often involving a story with fascinating details, full of risk, disappointment, and reward. Di Modica spent $360,000 of his own money and two years of his life creating Charging Bull, only to have it initially rejected by NYSE—then recalled to life by a loving public. That story is enshrined in the bronze itself, and we’re right to value it. The creation of Fearless Girl—contrary to what most people thought—is,ironically, less inspiring, so the performance component of our valuing drops.

But I think we may be led astray by our psychological mechanisms of contagion. There is a raw visual power in the juxtaposition of the little girl and the bull that we shouldn’t lose sight of, regardless of how annoyed we are at financial greed that fueled her origins. If we rejected all art with tainted origins, we’d miss some of the best material. Much art owes its existence to the support of wealthy benefactors, many of whom have been ethically challenged in some way (aren’t we all?).

So in the end, I think we should still appreciate Fearless Girl for what she is, despite her less than spectacular origins. And in two hundred years, if she’s still around, I think people will still love what she stands for in the imagination, regardless of the corporate plaque at her feet.