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Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode, as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s.
Today, my lovely listeners, we're talking about something a little bit different.
A little bit less positive, a little bit less uplifting than I'm sure you guys are used to.
In fact, like the complete opposite of all of that.
We are talking about hate and why we secretly love to hate, why we secretly love being haters.
Be honest with me here.
There is something in all of us, whether you are in touch with it or not, that may be slightly envious of other's success, even if you try not to be.
That maybe enjoys the drama of reality TV, even if you know like...
Maybe this isn't the best.
That secretly kind of gets hooked by public outrage or by cancel culture that enjoys being a hater.
I'll be honest, you know, sometimes I get way too into celebrity drama.
It's like my guilty pleasure.
When I know I shouldn't, when I know that, you know, 90% of it is incorrect.
And especially when I know how hard it is to receive public hate and have a lot of angry people in your DM saying awful things.
But it's like the same reason that we get drawn to gossip or wanting to know what couples argue about.
We love the heightened sensations and the social element to gossip. hating on other people.
Like I said, I would make a pretty good guess that everyone listening has felt this weird emotion at some point in their lives.
Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, there is no shame here.
We're just here to talk openly about the human experience.
And I think, like every emotion hate, Specifically the kind of hate we're talking about now, which is a little bit more benign.
It has a story.
That is what takes it from just a thought, a thought, that we ultimately have control over to something else entirely.
And so that is what we are going to talk about today.
We're going to look at where this like secret hatred kind of comes from, why it like biologically feels so good, even if we don't want it to, the guilt hangover that comes afterwards, the psychology of gossip, the psychology of cancel culture, why our closest friends are sometimes our biggest haters, and so much more.
I might be a little bit of an uncomfortable conversation, but I also think the psychology is so fascinating and like mind blowing to me.
So without further ado, let's talk about why we secretly love to be a hater.
Stay with us.
So, to begin by answering a very simple question what drives us to kind of hate on other people a little bit?
Why does it again sometimes feel so fulfilling to sit down and have like a ridiculous gossip session, to hate watch reality TV or maybe like see a public figure that you really don't like flounder?
Why does that make us feel, you know, almost good?
The first thing we need to know, and although this may sound controversial, it is a fact there is no such thing as a bad emotion.
There are negative emotions that can leave us feeling bad, or there are emotions that can maybe influence us to do bad things.
But the idea that an emotion is wholly evil, impure and to be avoided at all costs is false.
A lot of the reason why we see emotions like anger envy, hate as bad is because of the influence of religion and how we have also been socially conditioned, shunned and shamed for certain feelings that ultimately yes, may be uncomfortable, may lead to bad actions, but still serve a weird biological, psychological purpose.
And disliking things, maybe even disliking other people is no different.
Now, quick clarification here.
We are not talking about hate that turns into discrimination or hate that turns into prejudice.
We are not talking about hate crimes and trying to justify those.
No, the feeling of hate and the actions we take in response to them are separate.
But more importantly, the kind of hate we're talking about is is an intense dislike that kind of serves as information, information on our values, on our insecurities, our fears, our misunderstandings that we have a choice to either engage in, dismiss or work through.
And that choice is really important.
The thing about hatred is that, probably more than any other emotion, we have been told to suppress it, and it has been demonized, whether rightly or wrongly.
But that may actually be what causes it to feel so good when we finally do get to experience it kind of more in like a pop culture or like social context.
This is the catharsis theory of hate.
The very fact that we are told not to feel it makes it so that when we indulge, when we hate on a celebrity, when we see someone fail, it's like this pressure is released.
We finally do the forbidden thing, and that mix of naughtiness, the build up the inherent social part of this as well, is what brings a lot of people satisfaction with being a hater.
There's been so much research over the years about why hate feels good.
Another theory is that it's because it's so intense that it feels this way.
It's just the intensity and the strength of the emotion that makes it almost pleasurable.
It's that intensity that causes our brain to be flooded with neurotransmitters that we usually associate with happy, positive emotions.
Things like Dopamine serotonin adrenaline, few other emotional states cause people to act as irrationally boldly, sometimes as terribly, as hate does.
Few emotions feel as powerful and strong and therefore sometimes as good.
Some very interesting research, actually from only a couple of years ago.
2023 actually found as well that.
Hate is one of the only so-called negative emotions that can actually coexist with happiness.
So it's possible to be hateful and to hate on other people and to also still be happy at the same time.
Whereas when we feel other negative emotions like envy, like anxiety, like grief...
Often that means the absence of happiness.
So it's interesting that hate kind of sits in this weird in-between.
Is it a negative emotion?
Is it a positive emotion?
Because it makes us feel good.
But socially, we've been conditioned and we know that it doesn't always lead to good outcomes.
That's what makes it so confusing.
So yes, it is not just you.
Hate has this weirdly enjoyable tinge to it, and what is one of the primary ways we express our dislike or hate for someone else?
Gossip.
Gossip, what some people call the oldest human language.
Let's talk about it for a second.
Every single one of us gossips.
Let's just put it out there.
I don't know anyone who doesn't.
They might not label it as gossip, but it still is.
Even if we know we shouldn't, even if we have been the victim of it, even if we try our hardest not to like it or not to indulge in it.
Gossip is essentially a pretty ancient survival mechanism.
It is what has allowed us to navigate social contexts for as long as humans have been able to communicate.
Let's do a little bit of a very ancient history lesson.
In a tribe of 150 people or even more, you know, our ancestors couldn't know everyone personally.
And yet they needed to know who was trustworthy, who was a potential threat and who should be avoided.
Gossip therefore serves as kind of a form of social intelligence, a way to basically learn about the reputation and behaviors of others in the group without direct, potentially risky interactions and without having to watch them constantly to really know what kind of person they are.
In this way, you know, some people do call gossip a deeply pro-social act.
It helps to enforce social norms, builds a sense of community and trust within an in-group by sharing this private information.
It also allows us to police or monitor other people's behavior, a group's behavior, without resorting to violence or confrontation.
It's a very fundamental part of human social bonding.
If you're thinking, yeah, I'm not buying it.
There's literally no way gossip has ever been helpful.
I totally get where you're coming from.
I think we have all been at the sharp end of someone else's hateful thoughts or opinions about us, expressed through gossip.
But...
A way that me and my friends have used gossip is actually to stay safe when dating.
So one of our friends went on this date with this guy a couple of months ago and had a pretty terrible kind of scary experience with this guy.
Anyways, a few months later, we're at a party.
She got to speaking to a girl at this party.
And this girl was like, had just mentioned that she just met the same guy.
And I was kind of interested in this guy and they're kind of dating.
You can guess how that conversation went down.
You know, my friend told the girl what happened to make sure.
She was cautious.
She didn't say like, don't date this person.
She was basically just like, hey, this is just information you need to know.
You can do with it what you wish.
And the other girl was super appreciative.
In this way.
That is gossip and that gossiping could have prevented her from going through the same awful experience that my friend had.
This leads to a really crucial nuance.
Sometimes gossip isn't about being malicious at all.
It's actually about a need for emotional processing and validation when direct confrontation isn't an option.
Think about a time when you know you were so hurt or frustrated by someone, but you additionally felt like it was inappropriate to actually like express it to them.
Maybe it was your boss.
Maybe it was like a subtle betrayal from a friend and you can't confront them because you're in this big friendship group.
It's going to make things awkward.
The dislike that is bubbling in these circumstances.
Well, gossip may be a way of externalizing what we have already said is a very intense emotion.
It's like a form of venting, of saying this happened and it hurt and I'm feeling a real wave of negativity.
Am I crazy to be upset about this?
Your social circle then kind of acts as a jury that validates your feelings, validates your perspective, but also gives you this outlet for a very uncomfortable emotion that isn't going to completely destroy the relationship in question.
This is why some researchers have claimed gossip may be a form of emotional regulation for our hatred.
Just like hate feels good and gossip feels good, there's also this other element of seeing someone else fail and that feeling good.
Even saying that and acknowledging that that is a feeling that we have makes me feel like oh, probably shouldn't be talking about it.
It's a secret human thing, but it's true.
It's true.
Sometimes it makes us feel good.
This very powerful feeling has a name.
It's referred to as a schnedenfreude in German.
And it's basically a word that refers to the way in which we take pleasure from hearing about someone else's misfortune.
And it's a real thing.
Brain imaging studies have shown that when we experience schadenfreude I hope I'm pronouncing it right when we experience schadenfreude, there we go.
I butchered it schadenfreude, the brain's reward system, specifically this area called the ventral striatum, which we talk about a lot on the podcast.
It lights up, it gives us a rush of feel-good neurochemicals a whole big cocktail of them.
This is actually the same part of our brain that activates when you eat chocolate, when you fall in love, when you experience any other different types of pleasure.
This reward is also tied to feelings of superiority.
When someone we resent or feel is better than us fails, when they do something wrong or we interpret them to be doing something irritating or bad, it reaffirms our own sense of self-worth, even for a brief moment, and that therefore restores a sense of justice or balance in our minds, especially if that person is someone who has previously harmed us or who has previously laughed at our missteps.
It's an ego defense mechanism that makes us feel good about ourselves at another's expense.
In a world of constant social comparison, that little burst of dopamine can be powerful.
It can be a motivator, even if we don't want to admit that this is how we feel about it.
But of course, that's not the whole story.
I think the flip side of feeling hateful towards someone cheering on their failures, gossiping about someone.
Is that well firstly we know it's not a nice way to feel about other people.
It can create a pretty like I don't even know the word like sludgy, disgusting feeling in our brain that we shouldn't be feeling this way.
Secondly, it's bad for our reputation.
Thirdly, it can ostracize an individual when maybe they don't deserve to be ostracized.
Thirdly, to third or fourth, it can become a snowball where people start really piling on someone who maybe just made a small mistake and doesn't deserve everyone's suppressed anger to be like thrown directly at them.
And finally, you know, research shows that engaging in this kind of malicious feeling or malicious gossip or malicious behavior can actually harm your own well-being and it leads to a lot of intense feelings of guilt and shame.
That's our empathy kicking in.
That's the rational, thoughtful part of our brain that is often silenced by the emotional intensity of hatred.
Because we all eventually realize like hey, if this was me, I would feel devastated to know what those people were saying.
I would feel terrible.
I would feel awful.
I would be distraught at being thought of in that way.
It's a temporary high.
Hate is a temporary high that comes with a real emotional cost for multiple people.
It's also a bitter pill to swallow, but the psychological and physiological cost of hate is primarily held by the hater, not the hated.
You know, a moment of hate or gossip, it can feel rewarding.
The long-term reality of it though... is that you end up carrying chronic anger, resentment.
You end up seeing people through a lens of what about them can I criticize?
What about their failings will make me feel better about myself?
You know, we've all heard of that phrase.
Holding on to anger or hatred is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
That idea is true.
Carrying resentment harms us physically.
It's backed by science.
When we are angry, when we are hateful, our body activates its stress response system.
When you carry that bitterness for a long time, your body is stuck in a state of low-level emergency, because we know the emotional intensity of hatred will always elicit a deep feeling in us.
So if that deep feeling is constantly being allowed through, it's constantly also causing us to pump out stress hormones like cortisol.
It's constantly causing our heart rate to be faster.
It's constantly calling for tension in our body, which over time does become really toxic for our health.
One very famous paper from the 1980s.
It was one of the first papers of its time to find that chronic hostility, chronic hatred, is linked to high blood pressure, a weaker immune system and an increase in signs of inflammation in the body.
All of which are known contributors to heart disease and so many other illnesses.
That is the silent price you pay for cancer hate.
I think this toxicity and hostility can also keep us in a constant state of rumination, a really negative thought loop, where we cannot stop looking for bad things about other people, we cannot stop obsessing over other people's downfalls, we cannot stop immediately having the worst thought first when we meet someone new or when we are engaging with other people.
That negative thought loop that is a powerful predictor of poor mental health and mental health difficulties like anxiety and depression.
It's like you cannot get the song out of your head.
You just keep thinking about the way this person annoys you or the thing they said that one time that really upset you.
I've had this recently with a friend like a friend of mine was telling me about how someone we both know, who I would have considered a friend like, had some opinions about this podcast, had some opinions about my work and has obviously openly expressed those kind of mean opinions to people close to me.
And all weekend, I just couldn't stop thinking about it.
I couldn't stop thinking about how mad I was.
Maybe a part of me was trying to get back at her with those thoughts.
And I was feeling so hateful and like cruel towards this person.
And I was like, I'm the one bearing this.
I'm the one who was hurting from this the most right now.
But I understand why it's happening.
It's basically just your brain trying to make sense of it all.
It also makes it impossible to try and find peace.
And it can leave you feeling exhausted and even more bitter.
You know the saying, like, your brain becomes or your thoughts become what you think about the most.
Basically, the more you think about something, the more it begins to dominate over all other thoughts.
And this is what's happening here.
The more hateful thoughts you have, the more hateful thoughts you have, like it just compounds and compounds and compounds.
Over the long run, people who gossip, people who engage in this actually, they felt a lot worse and their well-being indicators decreased over time, specifically after sharing this information about someone they knew.
Specifically after gossiping and saying things they knew they shouldn't have.
Sometimes, you know, we feel like well, if this person said something bad about me, well then surely they deserve for me to say bad things about them, and we feel justified.
But the evidence suggests otherwise.
Now, of course, we're never going to get on with everybody.
Some people also do genuinely do us wrong and don't deserve a place in our lives anymore.
But if you don't like someone just because, or if you don't like someone and you've never even met them or they have done something to hurt you but genuinely apologized and shown remorse, it might be time to maybe start softening and maybe start letting that go, rather than drinking the poison if for no other reason than purely to protect your own peace.
We definitely need a better approach to anger, a better approach to hate and the desire to be a little bit of a hater.
So we're going to take a short break, but when we return, I want to just quickly discuss one other very important element of this, which is internet trolls and internet hate, and then give you some kind of tips, some kind of guidance for protecting how to properly integrate the hateful feelings that we all naturally have.
So stay with us.
Okay, listeners.
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Bring the boom.
Xboom.
Hello, my lovely listeners.
By now you know, the more knowledge we have about ourselves and the way our bodies work, the more empowered and in control we are.
And this is also true when it comes to our sexual health and what to do after unprotected sex.
That's where Plan B comes in.
It's emergency contraception with no age requirement that helps prevent pregnancy before it starts.
And because it works by only temporarily delaying ovulation, it won't impact your ability to get pregnant in the future.
We love a backup plan that puts us in control because the more we know, the more power we have.
Learn more at planb1step.com, users directed.
So you can't get the trip out of the group chat.
We've all been there.
But did you know there's actually a pretty easy solution?
EF Ultimate Break is a group travel company for 18 to 35 year olds, with over 140 itineraries all over the world.
Just sign up and recruit six or more friends for a trip and you'll save hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
You could even travel for free.
Learn more at efultimatebreak.com.
That's efultimatebreak.com and turn the group chat into a group trip.
Okay, we cannot talk about why it feels good to be a hater without talking about internet trolls and how they make hate their own contagious virus.
I've had my run-ins with trolls, which people are always really surprised to hear, because I feel like I really do inhabit a really peaceful corner of the internet, thanks to you guys.
But I think, as soon as something online reaches an audience of, let's say, I don't know, like 50000 people, maybe even less At that, there's like a level, there is a threshold where there will always be someone who does not like what you have posted, or who does not like you, or who has no reason to not like what you're doing, but just wants to hate on you.
And it's always the same kind of profile or person.
It's always a profile that has no face, no name, zero posts, zero followers.
And you can just tell, you know, this is someone's troll account.
This is an account they have deliberately made for this exact purpose to make others feel bad.
You know what?
I think I wouldn't mind if someone had an opinion about me and just said it with their chest and just said it with their main account and came out with it.
I think I could at least respect them for that.
But there is like a real deep cowardice to these kinds of people who lean even further into the thrill of being a hater because of this anonymity.
They never have to put themselves on the line.
So to go back a step, I do have to say an internet troll is not just someone who disagrees with you.
I'm super down for that.
An internet troll is someone who enters a conversation or someone's comment section or a podcast episode or a video, basically with the only intention being to upset the individual.
The aim of their comments is just to get some kind of response or reaction, so they'll often keep going and going until they like hit gold or until they hit the pipeline.
The comments get nastier, the slander gets even more personal, all with the aim of offending and causing upset.
It's something that brings them pleasure.
Who are the people behind these comments and behind these online attacks?
Well, researchers only a couple of years ago identified that online trolls are not just angry people who are venting.
They often possess a very specific cluster of personality traits that cause them to enjoy making other people upset.
This is known as the dark tetrad or the dark quad of personality traits, and it includes firstly, narcissism.
A lot of these online trolls have an inflated sense of self-importance and a deep need for admiration, which manifests as a feeling of entitlement to dominate spaces online.
It also may be that yes, they have a huge sense of self-importance, but in their lives they're really not doing much, and so this is a way for them to feel better about their lack of success or the success they feel entitled to.
They also have what we call machiavellianism.
This is a cynical disregard for morality and And a very manipulative strategic approach to social interactions, often using other people as their own source of amusement.
They find it fun.
They find it like a game of cat and mouse.
They like to play with people in that way.
Psychopathy, a lack of empathy, reduced capacity for guilt or remorse, and also a tendency towards impulsive and thrill-seeking behavior.
That's another core personality trait of these individuals.
And finally, what we call everyday sadism.
This is again the pleasure derived from inflicting psychological or emotional pain on others.
This one trait more than any other is most strongly associated with trolling behavior.
So just a refresh on those four traits narcissism Machiavellianism, psychopathy and everyday sadism.
These are the traits most common in our internet trolls.
A 2014 study published in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences actually looked at 12000 people, and it looked into both their internet commenting behavior, as well as asking them to complete a number of personality tests to measure elements of this dark tetrad, or dark quad.
Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that those who said that trolling was their favorite online activity also scored the highest in the dark tetrad personality traits.
The other thing about this study is that the authors even go as far as to say that these trolls see the internet as almost like a playground for them.
They actually enjoy this kind of behavior.
It is playful.
It is pleasurable to taunt other people and to hate on them with the intention of getting a reaction.
The online environment and online spaces that a lot of us find ourselves in currently are actually the perfect breeding ground for this type of hate, thanks to two key psychological factors.
There is a reason why you know you walk along on the street and like people aren't coming up to you and being like I think this about you or I'm going to just insult you.
But then when you go online, there are like thousands and thousands, maybe even millions of people operating this way.
Firstly, it's because, yes, they might be narcissists.
They might be, you know sadists, they're also cowards and they also don't have the freaking guts to say it.
But secondly again, it is that anonymity the shield of a username or an avatar, allows people to act without fear of real world consequences and social retribution.
You can say something awful to someone and you will never have to face them.
You will likely never meet them.
You will never have to see the consequence.
You will never have to see their tears, their friends, their family trying to comfort them.
That makes it a lot easier for people to do and not feel guilty about.
There's also this theory that it's actually the fact, or the lack of eye contact specifically, that causes this.
The absence of this real time social feedback where you can see the other person's eyes, you have this window into their soul, you can see them suffer and you are meant to feel something in response.
The fact that there isn't that in these online spaces makes what you're doing feel less real and makes it easier for you to do.
These factors have all combined to create the perfect environment for the uninhibited act of expressed hate.
There it is.
It's like all this pent up emotion that we all have.
The pleasure that we all somewhat derive from hating on other people or feeling better because of someone else's downfall, which we could typically manage in a safe and healthy and sustainable way and process accurately.
Or you could just go online and just be a hater.
Which one takes less work?
Also, it's worth saying, you know the nature of modern day social media.
Algorithms are designed to amplify extreme or emotionally charged content, and that creates these echo chambers Where we are exposed to more hate and less nuance.
Maybe you have noticed this.
I definitely have, especially on Instagram, where there could be hundreds of positive comments on a reel or on a video or on an image.
You go to the comment section there.
What's always at the top?
If there is a hate comment, if there is a mean comment, it's always at the very top of that comment section.
Even if it has less likes, even if it has less engagement, the algorithm prioritizes this kind of Intensity and vitriol and this emotional reaction that it knows it's going to pull people in.
This constant exposure normalizes this being a normal response to other people, because we always see it, because it's always there, because it's always the top comment.
It normalizes that.
This is just like an everyday reaction that you are allowed to have about someone else's behavior.
And it is not.
So trolling is one element.
But you might be thinking listen, I have a private account, I'm not in the public eye, I don't really need to think about trolls.
That is totally true.
You might not have to worry about strangers on the internet, but something that a lot of people talk about is the fact that their biggest critics are sometimes the people that they are actually closest to in their lives.
So why are some of our biggest haters maybe not the people online, but our closest friends, our family members, even our partners in some extreme cases?
The core reason for this is rooted in a fundamental psychological principle, social comparison.
Sure, we can compare ourselves to strangers on the other side of the world.
It's pretty easy to do so.
But what is an even easier and closer source of comparison?
Those in our immediate social circle.
Our best friend, our friendship group, our peers, our siblings.
These are the people whose lives are most relevant to our own sense of self-worth.
When you achieve some kind of personal success maybe it's a promotion, or you've just got engaged or a huge personal milestone and a friend or family member responds with like a subtle backhanded comment or jealousy or even outright hatred.
It often takes us by surprise.
We're like, wait, aren't you the one who's meant to be the happiest for me?
Yeah.
But often this is a reflection of their own deep-seated insecurity and envy.
Your success has inadvertently highlighted something they feel they lack.
They interpret your success and your achievements as their downfall, not realizing that obviously there is room for everyone.
And the hate they direct at you is often a subconscious attempt to restore their own self-esteem by tearing yours down.
Which is bizarre.
It's wild.
I don't understand why it happens.
I don't think it necessarily makes a lot of sense, but it is something that people talk about time and time again.
The best friend, who's just like always a little bit too gleeful when something goes wrong in your life.
Or the friend who is never really that happy for you when something goes well.
Those closest to us often have the deepest capacity for hate, not necessarily because their love was fake, but because love and hate draw from the same well of intimacy.
It's particularly painful because it's coming from someone who does know you, who knows your vulnerabilities, who knows what you really are scared of, who knows your fears and their words, their backhand compliments.
You know that can hit with a precision that a stranger, like a stranger online, can't.
Never could.
And often we can be like oh, you get a troll comment or someone says something rude to you on the internet.
You can be like, well, this person doesn't know me.
They're not important in my life.
The stakes are entirely different when it's someone who literally, you would trust with your life, who you would trust with so much of yourself.
A lot of these personal grievances, again, stem from insecurity and are a deep act of projection.
I feel like a lot of us have heard of the term projection before.
It's a rather amorphous psychological term that I think just gets like thrown around.
But it basically means that someone holds a mirror up to us and what we see in that reflection, what we see in that mirror, we don't like.
And so, instead of realizing that we don't like it, because it's something that we don't like about ourselves and that we are critical of ourselves about, we target the reflection of that in someone else.
So basically, it means that the things you hate the most about other people are the things that you see as being most true about your own character.
There are so many studies too many to count that reference this.
But basically again, when we don't feel good, sometimes it is easier to bring others down than it is to acknowledge that we don't really like ourselves right now.
A lot of hate, it does stem from our own state of psychological well-being.
In fact, I think every single example that we have given in this episode is evidence of that, is evidence of the fact that in order to gossip, in order to troll someone, in order to try and tear someone down, in order to cheer on someone's downfalls imminent, there has to be something about your own life that doesn't feel amazing at that point.
You know someone whose life is full of love, someone who has confidence in their life, someone who has you know something that they are invested in in their life.
They don't have the time and the energy to be focused on what's going on beyond them or beyond their closest circle.
They don't have time to be trolling the internet looking for someone to make themselves feel better by making someone else feel worse.
So it is a real deep truth about our desire to hate.
Hatred also is really rooted in boredom, idleness, and frustration by our own life circumstances.
When we talk about confronting hate in ourselves and confronting this negative feeling or dealing with it from other people and trying to integrate that and understand why someone doesn't like us.
It's never really about the person receiving the hate.
They are just a conduit for something much larger.
They are just a proxy.
And I think that is important to recognize and realize and remember, whatever side of the equation you are on.
It's not really about them, is it so?
On that note, if hate is so damaging to us, if it stems from insecurity in such a deep, sometimes ugly way, how do we break free from its cycle, both in ourselves and in our interactions with others?
Well, we're going to talk about all that and more after this short break.
Stay with us.
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As much as I've tried to dive into the humanness and the universality of sometimes being a hater, how it sometimes does feel good, how a lot of us do it over time, it is not something to be celebrated and it does not make us feel good to be someone who only has bad things to say about other people.
And we do have to call ourselves out on it for a number of reasons.
Firstly, so that our brain doesn't become this negativity machine.
Secondly, so we are actually nice to be around.
Thirdly, for just the kindness and grace that we want to show other people that we would expect in their circumstances.
We want to do unto others as we would want done unto ourselves.
And addressing our relationship with the hate within us is a really important part of that and is a really important way that we're going to do that.
So the first step is really, and I know I say this every single time, but it is self-awareness.
The fact that you are listening to this episode and you may have nodded your head along to a couple of things and may have seen yourself in some of these descriptions, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
I actually think that's an amazing thing.
And I think that you like.
Being able to see the ugliness in yourself is one of the most profound forms of self-awareness, even if it feels kind of uncomfortable.
Someone who was truly a hateful, despicable person, someone who was truly a sadist or a psychopath or Machiavellian, does not have the capacity to do that.
So the fact that you do shows that you're not like those people who find the routine of hate pleasurable.
So, now that you've acknowledged it, I think the next step is that, when you feel the impulse to hate, to gossip, to lash out, just ask yourself pause, like what are you really feeling right now?
What is the root of this feeling?
Is it anger?
Is it jealousy?
Is it a lack of control?
Is it powerlessness?
Is it a fear of not being good enough?
Remember, even if you are in the middle of saying something mean, right in the middle of writing a comment, right in the middle of hate watching something on TikTok, or whatever you're doing, you can always just stop.
Just because you have started an action doesn't mean that you are now fully committed to finishing it.
You can just stop.
You can always just course, correct and literally say to the other person or say to yourself like actually I'm sorry.
I actually don't want to do this.
I don't want to say that.
I don't want to engage in this.
I don't want to feel this way.
I'm gonna stop, I'm gonna hit pause, I'm gonna handle this differently.
Sorry about that. a big root cause of our hate is often actually not pure dislike.
It is often jealousy, insecurity and comparison.
So in that way, acknowledging that also means that you can then begin to have a different relationship with envy and you can turn it into a compass rather than something that might allow you to hate on someone and give you that little spike of dopamine, but in the long term really actually harms you.
When you feel that pang of envy or frustration at someone else's achievement or milestone, instead of letting it fester and instead of following the instinct to tear them down, literally say to yourself okay, what about this situation do I actually want?
If you are responding to their circumstances with such a level of intensity, that means that you must really be invested in what they're doing and you must really care about what they're doing, and therefore a part of you probably wants it for yourself.
So you can use the intensity of this feeling as information.
A little mantra I like to say if I'm ever recognizing that feeling coming up is love that for them, want that for me.
The first half of that mantra really recognizes, you know, the positivity in their experience.
I love that for them.
That looks great.
I think that that, you know, European trip looks delightful.
I think that their recent success is incredible and they really deserve that.
I want that for me and pleads for them.
And then that envy that I would normally feel is actually being redirected into a source of inspiration, into a tool for self-improvement, into motivation.
Again, at the end of the day, if you didn't care, you wouldn't be hating on them.
You literally cannot hate someone you don't care about.
So engaging in this form of cognitive reappraisal, where you consciously change how you interpret a negative emotion and you make it productive, is really going to help you not just ruminate on what you're missing in your own life and not in some way blame them for what you're missing, but turn that into something you can do about it.
You've got to recognize like social media isn't real.
You can also step away from it.
And your life will not be over.
I think we have this real dependency on social media now for all of our social needs and all of our informational needs as well.
Like it's how we feel like we stay in the loop.
It's how we feel like we connect with our friends.
It's how we have those like incidental social interactions with people online.
It's how we keep people in the loop.
There are heaps of other ways to actually do all of those things without playing into an algorithm.
That is quite hateful.
And even if that doesn't mean completely abstaining from social media, it might mean seeing something that immediately sparks your desire to hate and And engaging with it in a way that doesn't make it your problem.
So unfollowing, blocking, muting people.
I did a lot of that this week where I was just like huh, this is really making me feel really terrible.
And it's really like playing into my desire and feeling, my desire to like feel hateful and spiteful.
Um, and the thing is, is that that emotion may be natural.
It's also my responsibility and how I engage with that is my responsibility.
Someone's allowed to have their opinion or express their thought or talk about whatever it is they want to talk about and it be none of my business.
I'm allowed to disengage if it is possible for me.
And if the possibility is there, I should take it.
I will say I said this the other day to someone, to one of my friends.
I was like, curation of your social media is actually a form of self-care.
Like unfollowing and blocking people or just pressing not interested is a form of self-care.
And we should do more of it.
I think it's also really important to flip this around and learn how we can respond to hateful people.
Unfortunately, it's something most of us will be on the receiving end of in some point in our lives, either in person or online.
And there are some people who just like don't want to do anything about their hateful feelings.
We're obviously sitting here and we're talking about ways to like psychologically manage how we act on hate.
Some people literally just don't care and it feels so good to them that they can keep riding the high with never experiencing maybe, the psychological and emotional comedown of this negativity.
So how do you respond to a hater?
In a way that protects your own peace, in a way that doesn't make you turn into them.
It's important to remember that anytime you're engaging with someone who wants to hate on you whether it's a troll, whether it's a so-called friend this is not about winning.
This is not like you will never win.
You're never going to win against this kind of individual.
It's about reclaiming your own emotional energy, protecting your own energy and setting a more firm boundary.
If hatred comes online, specifically with trolls, they do not care about winning.
They do not care about presenting a solid argument.
They do not care about scoring points.
The only thing they are looking for is a reaction.
We know that from all of these psychology studies, right?
So actually, they want you to engage with them.
That's why they're being so inflammatory.
The best thing you can do is to just not.
The best thing you can do is to just be like, cool, I see your comment blocked.
And if everyone did that, it would be like suffocating the hate in them, because they wouldn't get the rise out of people that creates like the satisfaction loop for them and that keeps them engaging in this and doing this.
By refusing to participate, you take away their power.
And gosh, do I know how hard it is?
But something that I choose to do instead, because I understand the need to react to someone being hateful or spiteful.
Online is where I see negativity, I leave positivity.
If I see a girl dancing and every single comment is a hate comment, I'm leaving a positive one, and that's how I'm going to choose to engage.
I'm not going to start replying to people and trying to fight back.
I know it's not going to work.
I'm just going to match their energy with something like egregiously positive.
Same with sometimes when I get troll comments on my own posts.
I love to call trolls like honey and sweet cakes and baby cakes and like sweet honeybee or like lovely boy.
Or I love to like give them pet names and like be so, like sickly sweet, dripping with kindness towards them that, like they know they cannot get a rise out of me.
And it works.
It does work.
In person as well, you obviously can't block someone.
You can't be like, I want to mute this conversation.
Goodbye.
But you can create an emotional distance between you and what they're saying by simply just responding in like the most bland way possible.
Just being like, that's an interesting perspective.
Or, I'm sorry you feel that way.
Like they're a child.
Treat them like they're a child.
They will lose interest.
And they keep saying stuff just being like, I'm really sorry you feel that way.
I'm really sorry you feel that way.
And you slowly see that, like they're the ones who start to realize the ridiculousness of what they're saying, and that they're the ones who are pushing a conversation that you obviously don't want to have.
And it's like they look ridiculous.
Your reaction is so powerful when it is neutral because you are refusing to participate in the emotional side of this game.
And so in doing so, you are protecting your own peace.
Also.
Sometimes you just need to take a deep breath and you just need to again remind yourself this has nothing to do with me.
Anybody here could be the target of this.
They're just looking for someone to pile their shit onto.
They're just looking for someone to be like, to get the pleasure that they want out of this hateful feeling.
It doesn't have to be you.
You don't have to give them the space.
You don't have to give them the time.
The worst thing that can happen in this situation is that you fall to their level.
And I've done this.
I've seen it happen so many times.
But it's like the moment you get in the mud and start rolling around with them.
You are just one of these people.
And again, that's a conscious decision you can choose not to make by processing your own dislike for other people or your own insecurity, or your own grievances in a healthy way, by knowing that there's no such thing as a wrong emotion, but there is a better reaction and you're going to choose to take the better path.
That's a long freaking journey.
And again, I think especially right now, it's the harder choice.
It is the much harder choice to go high.
It will always be more rewarding and it will always be, more importantly, less emotionally exhausting.
So with that in mind, I'm going to wrap up the episode.
I hope that you learned a little bit more about the psychology behind being a hater, behind why we love to hate behind, you know, gossiping and cancel culture, and why we secretly can't wait for a celebrity's downfall.
This is like a completely normal and biological, psychological part of our behavior.
But the more we learn about it, the more I think that we can make it more civilized and just appreciate it on like a more nuanced level, rather than just being like monkeys, pushing a hateful button and being like yes, this makes me feel good.
This makes me feel good.
Like I'm just going to tear other people down.
You don't have to do that.
There are other choices and there are other ways to approach hate, especially in modern day society where it seems that, like everyone is, Everyone just wants public outrage.
Everyone just wants to be the meanest, cruelest person in the comment section, so they get the most engagement.
Like, nah, we don't have to do that.
We don't actually have to be a part of that.
We can handle that in a better way.
So I hope that is what you have learned or taken away from this episode.
If you have made it this far, I've been really enjoying song recommendations recently.
Leave your most like angry song, like the song you let all your rage and your hate and your spite out to.
In the comments below.
You know, the song that I'm going to recommend, which is not one that I normally get my anger and spite out to, but which I love as part of this, like hate anger cycle, is I'm Not Angry Anymore by Paramore.
And I love listening to that song when I feel like a lot of rage coming into my body, of like the higher path, the better path.
So song recommendation to end the episode.
I want to thank our researcher Libby Colbert for her contributions. to this episode.
She is amazing.
She is incredible.
We couldn't do it without her.
Make sure that you are following us on Instagram at That Psychology Podcast.
If you want to provide an episode suggestion, if you want to contribute to a future episode.
If you have further thoughts on online hate and why we love being a hater, I would love to hear from you and I'd love to hear those thoughts.
Make sure as well that you are following wherever you are listening, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app.
I don't know where you're listening from, but I would love if you stuck around for a little bit longer.
So hit follow, make sure to give us a five star review.
And until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself, handle that hate with care.
And we will talk very, very soon.
Stop settling for weak sound.
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Hello, my lovely listeners.
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