Character-conditioned hatred invents victims rather than responding to real threats

Evidence

Citing Fromm, Allport further distinguished rational hatred (for those who pose severe, realistic threats to one’s life or values) from “character conditioned” hatred arising from a lifetime of disappointments and frustration (see Duckitt, ch. 24 this volume). In the latter case, hatred is not meaningfully connected to the source of the frustration; rather, the individual “thinks up some convenient victim and some good reason. The Jews are conspiring against him, or the politicians are set on making things worse” (1954/1979, p. 364). In other words, hatred of this type is a function of personality abnormalities rather than being rationally targeted at groups that pose realistic threats. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2246

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes rational from character-conditioned hatred — a useful conceptual taxonomy.
• XREF: Connects to Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality and Duckitt’s later chapter; also resonates with scapegoating mechanisms in The Blithedale Romance and faction dynamics in the Milgrom law-merchant work. — connects to: Hostile epitomes can describe real events while distorting them beyond recognition; Trolling is a personality-driven abuse of conversational decorum linked to sadism and psychopathy — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 986; Narrated victimhood, not raw emotion, drives revenge among the advantaged group. (+3 more)