Why We Love to Hate? The emotional logic behind humanity’s darkest obsession

When we began measuring love through LVA back in 1999, something strange happened. In one test, we saw strong markers of love as a participant spoke about her uncle. Curious, I asked: “What was your relationship with him like?” She snapped back: “I hate this man to the bone.”

It wasn’t a lie. It was the paradox of hate. (And yes, it was also an interesting proof how close Love and Hate really are.)

What is hate, really?

Hate is not anger. It’s not disgust. It’s not even rage. It’s deeper, stickier, and longer-lasting. It shapes identity. In fMRI scans, hate lights up the same neural network as love: the insula, putamen, and parts of the frontal cortex. Both emotions create an intense, focused attachment to the object, except one binds with desire, and the other, with rejection. But neither lets go easily.

Hate comes with planning, with purpose, with aggression. Hate comes with passion... Hate isn’t accidental. Psychologists describe it as involving moral judgment, often tied to perceived betrayal, threat, or disgust. In tribal terms, hate was evolution’s way of saying: “Dangerous outsider. Defend the group.”

Now we’ve upgraded the weapons. Hate is now a system.

In the digital world, your hate is monetized. Every platform is optimized for engagement, and nothing hooks like anger. Algorithms show you the outgroup failing, flailing, or being humiliated, because watching the other side crumble lights up your brain’s reward center. You don’t just feel right. You feel good.

Social media isn't just reflecting hate. It’s cultivating it. We're being fed incomplete narratives - chopped, filtered, weaponized stories, that confirm our bias and blind us to nuance. In some systems, education has done the same. When an entire generation is raised on one-sided history, hate doesn’t grow by accident. It’s planted.

Hate feels good. Until it burns.

We hate when we feel powerless. When we’re told others are to blame. Hate gives shape to fear. It’s easier to say “they are your problem” than to sit with discomfort or ambiguity. But over time, that shortcut becomes a trap. Chronic hate reinforces fear pathways in the brain, shrinks empathy, and damages mental health. Hate narrows perspective. It steals your future by locking us in the past.

And it’s not just outward. Hate turns inward, too.

Often, what we hate in others reflects what we deny in ourselves. The brain treats social pain - like exclusion, humiliation, or shame, as physical pain. So we armor up. Project. Attack first. But the residue doesn’t wash away. This is why people who hate obsess. Hate is sticky. It loops, and sometimes, it disguises what we can’t admit: love, hurt, longing.

So why do we love to hate? Because it gives us clarity. Because it simplifies the world. Because, in some twisted way, it feels like power. A false power.

Modern neuroscience confirms what ancient sages sensed: Hate doesn’t just tear walls down. It hollows out societies from within.

Are we teaching hate? Ask yourself who you were told to hate growing up. Who were the villains in your textbooks, your family stories, your history classes? Ask what stories you’re fed today, on news, online, in algorithmic bubbles. Are you reacting? Or are you being directed?

Hate isn’t just an emotion. It’s a weapon. And it can be used on you.

So what do we do with it?

We start by noticing it. Tracking it. Asking why. We interrupt the dopamine hit when we see someone we dislike fail and instead ask: What story am I being sold here?

We teach our kids to seek nuance, not noise. We challenge the stories that feed hate with curiosity, not just counter-hate.

Because the opposite of hate isn’t love. It’s complexity. It’s seeing the full picture, even when it’s uncomfortable. It’s remembering that the same brain capable of hate is also capable of compassion, awe, even healing.

If we’re wired for hate, we’re also wired to overcome it.

And that might be the most human act of all.

Tisha B’Av, the Jewish day of mourning marked today, teaches that the Second Temple didn’t fall because of foreign powers, but because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred within. The lesson echoes still. Hate never builds. It only burns. Nothing good grows from hate. May we learn to love - without needing a reason.