Hate and Negative Emotions

Dislike, anger, contempt, disgust and hate are all negative emotions, but they represent different states:

• Dislike — you prefer not to be near someone (e.g. someone that makes jokes in poor taste)
• Anger — you want to change someone's bad behavior (e.g. someone smoking in a non-smoking area)
• Contempt — you look down on someone (e.g. a manager who treats their team poorly)
• Disgust — you consider someone immoral or undesirable (e.g. someone bullying weak people)
• Hate — you view someone as the opposite of your core moral beliefs (e.g. beliefs regarding abortion)

Negative emotions have evolved to help us coordinate our physiological, cognitive and behavioral systems for dealing with threats. Thus, each emotion has a goal:

• Dislike — to guide our general preferences
• Anger — to change someone's behavior in the short-term
• Contempt — to derogate and exclude someone
• Disgust — to avoid someone
• Hate — to eliminate someone from our life