This article (below) is an interesting take on a classic fable, one of Aesop’s. Like the fable The Ant and the Grasshopper, The Fox & the Grapes [1] is part of the moral fabric of the American psyche (and elsewhere).

The oft-quoted moral of the fable is: There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach. The sour grape effect has become synonymous with being dismissive and disparaging about goals we’ve failed to achieve.

A related proverb is the Biblical verse (Jeremiah 31:29), “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” [2]. Which is connected with my post “Puritan praise & pride” regarding the tension between personal and social ethics.

Blame-shifting applies to both the fable and proverb. Whether we disparage desirable grapes as sour anyway (thereby excusing a setback) or reframe fault for eating grapes that are sour (thereby posing accountability), how do we deal with the consequences? And that gets into the interplay between individual & collective merit. A question of preserving purpose when experiencing good or poor feedback.

Do we desire only what we think we can achieve? Both personally and collectively?

• Psychology Today > “The Psychology of the Sour Grape Effect” by Ross G. White Ph.D. (January 10, 2025) – Why a small fruit became synonymous with things not working out as we had hoped.

KEY POINTS

• Outcomes come in different flavors.
• In hindsight, we can devalue the importance of goals that we’ve fallen short on achieving. (As a face-saving way to move on with our lives, avoiding fruitless endeavors.)
• The so-called sour grape effect may help to bolster our levels of positivity to tackle the next goal.
• Research suggests that people who are more achievement-focused are less likely to experience sour grapes. (Go-getter foxes bear grapes less grudges.)

In 2020, a research team led by the Norwegian psychologist Hallgeir Sjåstad investigated not just whether people experience the sour grape effect, but also (and this is the bit the fox never got to discover!) whether those ‘grapes’ really do taste sour if we eventually get to taste them. Their research built on previous work conducted in the 1980s by the Norwegian philosopher Jon Elster (1983). He had coined the term adaptive preferences to capture the ways in which our desires change according to our experiences – in essence, we come to want what we think we can achieve.

One note of caution when considering the moral of Aesop’s fable of The Fox and The Grapes – sometimes we can be premature in assuming that goals are beyond our reach. Let’s not underestimate the role that hard work, ingenuity, and, in particular, support from others can play in helping us to achieve our goals.

Notes

[1] Read.gov > The Aesop for Children (public domain) > The Fox & the Grapes

[2] Got Questions > “What does it mean that ‘the fathers have eaten sour grapes’ (Jeremiah 31:29)?“