It makes sense to dislike someone when they’ve harmed or wronged you. But why would you dislike someone who hasn’t wronged you in any way? You know you have no reason to hate them, but still do. What’s going on?
The first thing to know about this phenomenon is that there’s no such thing as hating someone for no reason. That’s just not how the mind works. To generate the feeling of disliking someone, the mind needs some input, some stimuli. When you dislike someone instinctively, it may seem that you dislike them for no reason. But the reality is there’s always a reason, no matter how subtle.
Disliking someone instinctively happens on a subconscious level. So, it appears that there’s no reason behind it. If you were to dig deeper, however, you’d certainly unearth a reason or multiple reasons.
Response to perceived threat
Imagine you’re driving on a highway, listening to music. You see an obstacle on the road and quickly steer your car to the side of the road. It all happens in the blink of an eye. Your conscious mind tries to process what happened after the event.
Later, you find out that there was an oil spill on the road that made it look like a giant pothole. Based on what your subconscious mind registered (‘Danger! Pothole ahead!’), you made a snap judgment and decision to steer away. If it were indeed a giant pothole, you’d be in serious trouble.
Our mind doesn’t want to take any chances with potentially life-threatening events. The same applies to threatening people. Almost always, when we instinctively dislike someone, they’re a perceived pothole we’re quickly trying to avoid. They represent a threat to us.
Hatred is a defense mechanism of the mind to protect us from perceived or actual threats. When you instantly dislike someone, you’ve made a snap decision that they’re threatening based on minimal information.
Reasons we instinctively hate someone
In this section, we’ll explore why we arrive at snap judgments about the people we’ve just met:
1. They’re different
Humans are prone to outgroup bias.1Shkurko, A. (2021). In-Group–Out-Group Bias. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science, 4133-4135. We perceive those who are different from us in any way as outgroups. The differences can be large or small. Doesn’t matter.
The moment you give another human being the slightest indication that you’re different than them is the moment they dislike you. Humans are wired to like and bond with their own tribe. In ancestral times, foreign tribes posed a threat to human tribes. So, we carry psychological mechanisms that make us suspicious of other, different tribes.
Of course, the easiest way to spot a difference between you and them is appearance. If someone looks different, you feel like they belong to a different, hostile tribe. This is the basis of nationalism, racism, racial supremacy, prejudice, and discrimination.
But it doesn’t stop at appearance.
Ancestral tribes also shared common values and beliefs. They possessed a distinct cultural identity that set them apart from other tribes. So, even today, when people encounter individuals with differing views from their own, they tend to dislike them or at least be suspicious about them.
This is also why polite disagreement is so rare and challenging in public debates and discussions. When you disagree with someone, you’re effectively saying:
“I disagree with your beliefs. I am not of your tribe.”
2. They’re competing with you
Humans in ancestral times faced threats not only from foreign tribes but also from their own tribe members. In any tribe, individuals competed with each other to raise their social status. Higher status meant more access to resources and better chances of survival and reproduction.
When you come across someone competing with you for what you want, you may instinctively dislike them. It could be:
- A smarter coworker who could outsmart you and perform better
- A hard-working coworker who could outwork you
- A sycophantic coworker trying to win your boss’s favor
- An attractive person courting your crush
We’re all threatened by competition, and this feeling of being threatened easily morphs into dislike or hatred. While the above examples are obvious, this can also happen in subtle ways. For instance, if you have a friend you’re close to, and they suddenly enter a relationship, then their relationship partner is competing with you for your friend’s attention. You might find yourself disliking their new partner for no reason.
Jealousy is often a big reason for disliking someone for no apparent reason. Jealousy results from upward social comparison.2Muller, D., & Fayant, M. P. (2010). On being exposed to superior others: Consequences of self‐threatening upward social comparisons. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(8), 621-634. You see someone who’s better than you or has what you want, and you feel jealous. Many people are unlikely to admit they’re jealous, to themselves or others, so it seems to them as if they dislike someone for no reason.
Additionally, jealous people are often motivated to bring down those they’re jealous of. Since jealous people know they can’t compete directly, they indirectly try to bring people who are better than them down by criticizing or trolling them.
3. They remind you of something threatening
Our minds are association machines. Our memories are essentially a web of associations. When you get that bad ‘vibe’ from someone without knowing why, it could be that they reminded you of a previous negative experience.
For example, their nose may have reminded you of an uncle who abused you as a kid. Any signal they give off that reminds you of a prior, negative experience could trigger your dislike, such as their:
- Talking style
- Accent
- Walking style
- Appearance
- Mannerisms
- Habits
4. They’ve previously threatened you
We don’t have access to all our memories at all times. It’d be so overwhelming if we could do that. If someone hurt you a long time ago, you might have forgotten it. You may have even cut that person off from your life.
When you suddenly encounter that person again, years later, you find that you can’t help but dislike them. You can’t think of a good reason why you don’t like them. This is likely to happen when your relationship with them has been good overall. Or when they meet you now, they’re super nice to you. You don’t understand what went wrong with this super nice person.
If you keep exploring, it’ll eventually hit you. You’ll remember that they did something that hurt you, even if it was just one small thing. You had long forgotten the reason, but it was alive and kicking in your subconscious.
5. You want to hide from yourself
People tend to hide their flaws and ignore the qualities they need to develop. So, when they come across someone who has the same flaws as them or possesses the qualities they want, they hide again. People who remind us of our flaws or desired qualities are threatening because they force us to self-reflect. By pushing them away, we push parts of ourselves away from ourselves.
For example:
- As an impolite person, you dislike polite people.
- You lack confidence, and confident people put you off.
- You lack self-discipline, and you see disciplined people as strange or boring.
6. Their nonverbals are off
Since most interpersonal communication is nonverbal, getting it wrong can heavily influence the judgment of others. When we meet people, we’re constantly making snap judgments about them. If they display welcoming and open body language, we feel good. If they show closed body language, we feel off.
We’re quick to put people in the ‘friend’ or ‘foe’ category because, again, the mind doesn’t want to take any chances. It makes these critical decisions based on minimal information gleaned from body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice. After all, if you mistake a foe for a friend or a pothole for an oil spill, you could be in serious trouble.
7. They have exploitative energy
Human relationships are based on reciprocity, a balance of give and take. When we detect an imbalance in reciprocity with someone, we might dislike them. Now this can happen in an obvious way. For instance, a friend who has never done a big favor for you asks for a big favor. Or in subtle ways where you may not be able to consciously pinpoint the reason you feel off about them.
For example, someone not thanking you when you do favors for them. You subconsciously sense their lack of reciprocity in the ‘exploitative energy’ they give off. Still, unless you give it thought, or someone points it out, you may not realize that it’s their lack of gratitude that’s causing you to dislike them and feel uncomfortable around them.
If you sense exploitative energy in someone or feel they're using you, it's a red flag you should definitely not ignore.
How to overcome these biases
The first step is to understand them and accept that you may occasionally fall prey to them. Carl Jung said:
“No one is free from the bias of being human.”
Appreciate how your mind is doing its best to protect you. Take in everything that it tries to communicate to you. Then, collect more data to confirm your intuitions, if possible. Relying entirely on intuition or reason is not optimal. To make the best decisions, you need to rely on both.
If you do feel off for no reason around someone, pause and reflect on what’s going on. Maybe think again before you sign that deal with them. Or before you get married to them. You only want to enter long-term contracts with people you can trust sufficiently. That largely means not getting any negative vibes from them. The right people are unlikely to trigger your subconscious threat-detection sensors.
