What Is Hate?
Chapter 1 explains hate in light of the available psychology literature. It defines general human feelings of hate and gives examples of two important components: ‘threatened egotism’ and ‘perceived injustice’. The author focuses on threatened egotism and
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What Is Hate?
Abstract Chapter 1 explains hate in light of the available psychology literature. It defines general human feelings of hate and gives examples of two important components: ‘threatened egotism’ and ‘perceived injustice’. The author focuses on threatened egotism and perceived injustice as the major root-causes of feelings of hate and anger. He uses Sternberg’s hate classification in order to define the various dimensions of hate, from low level to high level (or alternatively severe hate) in terms of Sternberg’s triangular hate model. After this chapter, readers should have a basic understanding of the concept of hate and its dimensions. Keywords Hate • Threatened egotism • Perceived injustice • Dimensions of hate • Level of hate and severity of hate Without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool On the Pleasure of Hating, Hazlitt (1826/1995), p. 190
Hate is one of the strongest human feelings. Some of us struggle with this feeling on an almost daily basis. However, it is not a widely studied subject in the fields of social and behavioral sciences. Part of the reason is because hate is so negative and disturbing a feeling that generally people do not want to talk about it, prefering to ignore it. Yet its impact and influence is
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 S.U. Kucuk, Brand Hate, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41519-2_1
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always present at both conscious and unconscious cognitive levels. In fact, some scholars claim that negative emotions and negativity in general have a deeper impact on human feelings than positive feelings, cognition and behaviors. Research has revealed that people tend to recall negative events more easily than positive ones and that negative experiences have a deeper impact on people’s attitudes and behaviors than positive ones.1 This, in turn, can be conceptualized as “negativity bias”,2 meaning that people tend to weigh negative experiences in their decisions more heavily than positive ones.3 Thus, we may be led by our negative and hateful emotions (such as anger, disgust, dislike, and so on) rather than positive emotions (such as love, happiness, compassion, and so on) when we evaluate other people and objects. Or we are at least influenced by negative emotions as much as positive ones. Either way, having feelings of both hate and love are how people give meaning and reasons to their lives. Sometimes in a peaceful way and other times in a painful way. However, as human beings, we like to see the positive side and tend to ignore negatives most of the time. We love to love and we hate to hate, and we want to be happy all the time. We do not want to think about negative results and feel hatred, even though it is perhaps sometimes a reasonable and logical outcome of our behaviors. This is in our nature. We want to see happy endings in every event. In other words, we are all programed to think positively—which is, I believe, our main life source. Positive thinking makes us happy
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