“I hate him,” “he hates me,” “we hate each other.” The conjugations of the verb to hate seem to multiply everywhere. In fact, they have become so common that we even have a law that criminalizes hate crime – or perhaps it is precisely that law that has pushed hatred to stratospheric levels by encouraging that very human tendency to do precisely what we are prohibited from doing. One way or another, we may be hating beyond our means.
What is hate? From etymological meaning to psychological concept
To understand what hate is, we must go back to its etymology. Although it derives directly from the Latin odium, this word in turn comes from the Greek word ὠθέω (otheo), which means to reject or push away.
Although originally its Indo-European root (vad or uad) literally meant to press. In fact, in ancient Persian, the expression vad was used to designate a blow or an argument.
However, both the Indo-European root ad of the word hate and the Latin word edo also expressed an intimate gnawing. Therefore, hate refers us to feelings of intense animosity and rejection with a particularly destructive force.
In Psychology, hate is an affective attitude of hostility towards something or someone who, apparently, has negative traits that are incompatible with ours. Given its emotional intensity, it is usually accompanied by an impulse to hurt the other or a desire for them to harm themselves.
Like the rest of the affective states, hate can be an emotion that appears intensely but fleetingly or it can become a feeling, in which case it is established and becomes chronic.
One step beyond disgust and anger
Hate is not a simple “I don’t like it.” It does not only express displeasure but goes beyond anger and concentrates a high level of negativity, as confirmed by a study carried out at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. In other words: what we hate is much more negative than what we dislike. Therefore, hatred is several steps ahead of aversion.
Likewise, it far exceeds anger. In fact, there is a big difference between anger and hatred since the motivation underlying them is different. When we get angry about something or someone, we maintain hope for change. In fact, anger is an emotion that pushes us to act to change what bothers us.
On the other hand, hate is an annihilating experience. We are convinced that what we hate cannot change because we consider it to be intrinsically negative or even evil. That means that this feeling implicitly implies a value judgment based on what we consider morally correct or not.
For this reason, hated goals often represent an existential threat, especially when we feel powerless or perceive that we have little control on the situation. As a result, our goal is not to change the state of things – as in anger – but to avoid, hurt or eliminate the object of our hatred.
Is it possible to hate what we don’t know well?
Gordon Allport conceived of hate as a strong form of disgust with exacerbated negativity, but he also clarified that it cannot exist “Unless something one values has been violated.”
Along those same lines, other psychologists have argued that hate always implies a negative evaluation of something or someone based on a moral judgment. That is, we consider what we hate to be morally deficient or we feel that it has somehow violated our ethical code.
In fact, a study carried out at the University of Haifa in 2008 on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict found that hatred is usually a direct reaction to the perception of long-term damage suffered, which we classify as deliberate and unjust and derives from an evil nature intrinsic to the hated individual or group.
Therefore, hate is inextricably linked to morality and the certainty that the other is essentially bad and cannot change. That, obviously, requires minimal knowledge of the other.
That it is difficult to hate what we don’t know is supported by another research carried out at the universities of Texas and Hawaii. These psychologists analyzed that feeling on a daily basis by asking a group of people who they hated and why.
Participants who wrote about the object of their hate often referred to friends, family, and acquaintances (56%), but rarely to strangers (4%), suggesting a deep link between hate and familiarity.
And to activate a state so intense that it triggers the desire to attack, greater emotional arousal and a perception of personal threat are required, as researchers from the universities of Groningen and Amsterdam later confirmed.
Of course, hate can also be learned and transmitted. After all, we live in a culture of war – well disguised, of course – that promotes violence and in which competence is the main way of life.
We are taught to compete and hate the enemy – which means anyone who is different or thinks differently – which leaves little room for empathy and finding that which unites us. That is why we may be more willing to hate and fight than to resolve conflicts through dialogue.
However, even that does not justify the explosion of hatred that we are experiencing.
On Google, a search for the word “hate” returns 306 million results while compassion only 2.8 million. And we are actually confusing hatred with other feelings, such as animosity, rejection or anger. We are simply hating beyond our means.
To contain hate, you have to label each emotion well
Although speeches that promote hate prevail, not even Niccolò Machiavelli considered it a good strategy. Obviously, living consumed by hatred and resentment is not a good idea either.
The truth is that there is a lot of confusion about what hate is and, although we should not ignore it since, at the end of the day, it is an emotion with a message to convey to us, it is necessary to understand if it is really hate in its pure state or if we are misinterpreting what we feel.
Understanding exactly what hate is will allow us to refine our emotional granularity and avoid feeding an emotion that, in the long run, does not bring anything good, neither for those who feel it nor for those who receive it, because as Charles Darwin wrote, “Aversion easily turns into hate.”
Ultimately, it is important to be aware that because hate is born from a perceived threat, it is often an attempt to distract us from feelings such as helplessness, injustice, inadequacy or shame. Therefore, it can be a distraction from some form of inner pain.
The person consumed by hate may come to believe that the only way to regain some sense of control over their pain is to preemptively attack others. In this way, every moment of hate becomes a temporary relief for their inner suffering. But in reality it is nothing more than a patch that does not solve the basic problem. Therefore, perhaps we should ask ourselves: are we being induced to hate far beyond our capabilities?
References:
Petrus, C. et. Al. (2023) The psychology of hate: Moral concerns differentiate hate from dislike. European Journal of Social Psychology; 53(2): 336-353.
Martínez, C. A. (2022) Hate: Toward understanding its distinctive features across interpersonal and intergroup targets. Emotion; 22(1): 46–63.
Halperin, E. (2008) Group-based Hatred in Intractable Conflict in Israel. Journal of Conflict Resolution; 52(5): 10.1177.
Aumer, K. & Hatfield, E. (2007) The Design of Everyday Hate: A Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis. Interpersona; 1(2): 10.5964.
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