A new study suggests that anger and hatred are not merely different intensities of the same feeling but are distinct emotional systems with unique evolutionary functions. The study indicates that while anger motivates individuals to negotiate for better treatment, hatred drives them to neutralize or remove a threat. These findings were published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
Scientists have long debated the relationship between anger and hatred. Some psychological models suggest hatred is simply a more intense or durable form of anger. Other perspectives argue they are qualitatively different.
The authors of the current study approached this debate through an adaptationist framework. This perspective views human emotions as evolved mechanisms designed to solve specific problems faced by our ancestors.
“Anger and hatred are both central to conflict and aggression, but in everyday conversation—and often in research—they get treated as basically the same thing, just different intensities of ‘being mad,” said study author Mitchell Landers, a postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, San Diego.
“From an evolutionary perspective, that’s a strong claim. But if instead they’re distinct emotions, they should be specialized for different problems and produce different behavioral patterns. We were motivated by a simple idea: If you confuse anger with hatred, you’ll misunderstand what angry or hateful people are trying to accomplish, and you’ll likely apply the wrong strategy for resolving the conflict as a result.”
From this evolutionary standpoint, anger and hatred appear to solve different adaptive problems. The researchers propose that anger evolved as a bargaining system. It functions to recalibrate a relationship when a cooperative partner undervalues the angry individual. The biological logic here involves a concept called the welfare tradeoff ratio. This ratio represents how much one person values another person’s well-being relative to their own.
When a partner’s welfare tradeoff ratio is too low, they may impose costs on an individual. Anger arises to signal that this treatment is unacceptable. It uses threats of cost-imposition or the withdrawal of benefits to pressure the target into treating the angry person better. The ultimate goal of anger is to restore a cooperative relationship by forcing the target to care more.
Hatred addresses a fundamentally different problem. The researchers argue that hatred evolved to handle “toxic” individuals. These are people whose mere existence or well-being imposes a net cost on an individual’s fitness. In these cases, bargaining is ineffective. The problem is not that the target undervalues the hater. The problem is that the target is an enemy or a liability.
Consequently, the functional goal of hatred is not to improve the relationship. It is to neutralize the threat. This is achieved through strategies that reduce the cost the target can impose. Such strategies include distancing oneself, damaging the target’s status, or eliminating the target entirely.
The researchers hypothesized that if these emotions are distinct adaptations, they should trigger predictable and distinct behavioral strategies. To test this hypothesis, the authors utilized a first-person recall design. They recruited participants from two separate national samples. One sample included 368 participants from the United States. The second sample included 357 participants from the United Kingdom.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. In the anger condition, they were asked to recall a person they were “very angry at, but do not hate.” In the hatred condition, they were asked to recall the person they “hate most in the world.” They then wrote a brief description of why they felt this way to bring the emotion to the forefront of their minds.
Following this induction, participants rated their agreement with 16 behavioral strategies and goals. Eight of these items represented recalibrational tactics associated with anger. Examples included “confront them to talk about the problem” or “ask them to apologize so we can put it behind us.”
The other eight items represented neutralizing tactics associated with hatred. Examples included “never speak to them for the rest of my life” or “fantasize about killing them.”
The researchers also included seven distinguishing questions to probe social attitudes. These items measured constructs such as the perceived effectiveness of apologies and the willingness to cooperate. Participants rated how likely they would be to help the target if they were in distress. They also rated how willing they would be to listen to the target’s side of the story.
The results provided evidence for the distinct evolutionary functions of these emotions. Across both the American and British samples, the patterns of behavior were consistent. Participants in the anger condition showed a strong preference for recalibrational strategies. They wanted to confront the target, explain their point of view, and receive an apology.
In contrast, participants in the hatred condition endorsed neutralizing strategies. They expressed desires to inflict financial, social, or physical harm on the target. They also showed a strong preference for permanent avoidance. The data suggests that hatred activates a motivational system designed to sever ties rather than repair them.
“The differences were large and consistent,” Landers told PsyPost. “Across two national samples (U.S. and U.K.; total N = 725), the ‘anger profile’ strongly favored reconciliation-oriented responses, while the ‘hatred profile’ strongly favored distancing and neutralizing responses. These aren’t subtle, academic distinctions. People reliably separate these states in the kinds of action they feel pulled toward.”
The distinguishing items further illuminated these differences. Angry participants generally viewed apologies as effective. They indicated a willingness to listen to the target and potentially restore the relationship.
Hateful participants did not view apologies as effective. They were unwilling to listen and showed an “irrational” avoidance, meaning they would avoid the target even if it came at a personal cost.
The researchers also examined how emotional intensity influenced these behaviors. Increased intensity of anger was associated with a greater endorsement of bargaining strategies. However, very intense anger also showed some association with neutralizing strategies. This suggests that when bargaining fails repeatedly, anger may escalate toward hatred.
On the other hand, increased intensity of hatred was associated with a decrease in bargaining strategies. As hatred becomes more severe, the desire to communicate or repair the relationship vanishes almost entirely. This supports the idea that hatred is not just “loud anger” but a shift into a different cognitive mode.
“Anger is designed for bargaining; hatred is designed for elimination,” Landers explained. “When people feel anger, they want explanation, dialogue, apology, and behavior change. This reflects the fact that angry people implicitly value the target of their anger: They want the relationship to continue, but they want to negotiate a better ‘exchange rate’ in the relationship.”
“When people feel hatred, on the other hand, the pattern flips: The dominant impulses are to undermine the target, to remove them from one’s social world entirely, or even destroy them. The practical implication is that if someone is angry with you, apologies and explanations can help. But if someone is in a hatred state, pushing for reconciliation may backfire, because the goal isn’t repair—it’s distance or destruction.”
As with all research, there are some limitations. The study relied on self-reported thoughts and desires rather than observed behaviors. While thoughts often predict actions, they are not identical. Additionally, the samples were drawn from Western, educated, and democratic nations. It remains to be seen if these distinct functional profiles hold true across all cultures.
“One important caveat: Our framework is descriptive, not moral,” Landers noted. “Saying hatred functions to neutralize a perceived threat is not the same as endorsing hatred as good or justified.”
Future research could investigate the transition points between these emotions. Understanding exactly when and why anger gives way to hatred could help in preventing the escalation of conflict. The authors also suggest studying non-violent manifestations of hatred. This would further clarify the boundaries between these two emotional systems.
“We’d like to test these predictions with behavioral outcomes, examine more diverse populations beyond the U.S. and U.K., and map turning points for when and why anger de-escalates into repair versus escalates into hatred and permanent severing,” Landers said.
“We’d also like to investigate situations in which hatred shows signs of low anger, i.e., cases where someone has written another person off entirely without the ‘hot’ intensity we associate with conflict. This would further support the idea that hatred isn’t just anger that’s boiled over but a unique cognitive system with a distinct function.”
“A broader goal is to build emotion theories that make clear, testable predictions about what people will try to do in conflicts, because that’s where emotions matter most in the real world.”
“One broader implication is for conflict resolution,” Landers added. “Distinguishing whether someone is angry versus hateful can help you choose interventions that match what’s actually going on psychologically, whether in relationships, workplaces, or intergroup settings.”
The study, “The evolutionary logic of anger and hatred: an empirical test,” was authored by Mitchell Landers, Aaron Sell, Coltan Scrivner, and Anthony Lopez.
