Hate

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For other uses, see Hate (disambiguation).

“Hatred” redirects here. For the 1975 Soviet film, see Hatred (film).

Hatred is an emotion of intense revulsion, distaste, enmity, or antipathy for a person, thing, or phenomenon, generally attributed to a desire to avoid, restrict, remove, or destroy the hated object. Hatred is also among the most common emotions that humans experience. It can be based on fear of an object or past negative consequences of dealing with that object. Hatred is often described as the opposite of love or friendship; others, such as Elie Wiesel, consider the opposite of love to be indifference. People may feel conflicting and complicated emotions or thoughts involving hate, as in a love-hate relationship.

Often the verb "to hate" is used casually to describe things one merely dislikes, such as a particular style of architecture, a certain climate, one's job, some particular food, or people who claim to hate something when they in fact merely dislike it.

"Hatred" is also used to describe feelings of prejudice, bigotry or condemnation (see shunning) against a person, or a group of people, such as racism, and intense religious or political prejudice. The term hate crime is used to designate crimes committed out of hatred in this sense.

According to evolutionary psychologists, hate is a rational reaction to people whose interests consistently conflict with one's own. Hate is an emotion, hence it serves the protective mode of a person. People whose behavior threatens one's own survival interests are to be hated, while people whose behavior enhances one's survival prospects are to be liked or even loved (as in the case of offspring and other genetic kin).

The passions of hate arise from several features of our thinking process. These include wanting to assign blame to others for our misfortune, protecting our self-esteem, a desire to strengthen our community, alleviating our fears (by destroying the evil others), and several types of errors in reasoning, including cognitive bias. The ability to quickly separate friend from foe is essential to self-defense and safety and provides the origins of hate ^[1].

[edit] Notes

^ Emotional Competency Discussion of Hate

[edit] References

Hatred: The Psychological Descent into Violence by Willard Gaylin
Why We Hate by Jack Levin
The Psychology of Good and Evil : Why Children, Adults, and Groups Help and Harm Others by Ervin Staub
Prisoners of Hate : The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence by Aaron T. Beck
Becoming Evil : How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing by James Waller