FLOTSAM: A model for the development and transmission of hate

1 INTRODUCTION

In Sonnet 43, Elizabeth Barrett Browning asked, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” In the early years of the 21st century, with major conflicts and outright wars going on worldwide, one might just as well ask, “How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.”

What exactly is hate? A dictionary definition is “a very strong feeling of dislike” (Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hate). Some people might view hate as the opposite of love (see Alford, 1999, 2005; Rempel & Burris, 2005; Sternberg, 1987), although today among some scholars, indifference is more likely to be viewed as the opposite of love (Sternberg, 1998). Sternberg (2003) has viewed hate, in its full form, in terms of committed feelings of contempt and loathing felt with passionate intensity. In this form, it easily can give rise to extreme levels of violence. Other definitions have been proposed as well, by clinical psychologists (Akhtar & Kramer, 1995; Beck, 1999; Beck & Pretzer, 2005; Fromm, 1992; Kernberg, 1993), social psychologists (Baumeister, 1996; Baumeister & Butz, 2005; Berkowitz, 2005; Opotow, 2005; Royzman, McCauley, & Rozin, 2005; Staub, 1989, 2005; Weis, 2006), and developmental psychologists (Lerner, Balsano, Banik, & Naudeau, 2005; Moshman, 2005), among others. Hate has been viewed as an emotion (Frijda, 1986; Solomon, 1977), as an “emotional attitude” (Ekman, 2003), and as a compound of anger and fear (McCauley, 2016), or fight and flight. Beck (1999) has viewed hate as a response to a sense of threat from a malicious person.

Pinker (2016) has suggested that human violence has declined over time, but the hatred that often accompanies violence has maintained a large presence, whether human violence has declined or not. Hate is fundamental, for example, to genocide (Sternberg, 2003; Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008). It is hard to get people to kill others merely because of some kind of group identification without convincing them to hate members of that group. Genocide Watch has suggested a 10-stage model of genocide (Stanton, 2016). (Stanton, 2004 earlier provided a similar 8-stage model.) As of May 2016, fourteen nations are at Stage 9, four nations were at Stage 8, ten nations are at Stage 7, and nine nations are at Stage 5. That's 37 nations in stages of serious genocidal activity, with numerous other nations in less serious stages.

2 THE STRUCTURE OF HATE

For an understanding of hate, this article draws largely on the duplex theory of hate (Sternberg, 2003, 2005b). According to the duplex theory, hate can be understood in terms of two elements. The two elements work in tandem.

The first element is a triangle of hate. According to the theory, hate has three components: negation of intimacy, passion, and commitment. The second element of the duplex theory is a set of stories that characterize the hated object, for example, the hated object as an enemy of God, a rapist, a power-hungry usurper, a thief determined to deprive others of their money or their property, a subhuman animal form such as a cockroach, and so on. The various stories generate different triangles of hate. According to the duplex theory, people are often unaware of their stories, so they may come to hate members of a group without fully conscious awareness of just what it is that produces the emotions (negation of intimacy), motivations (passion), and cognitions (commitment) of hate.

The duplex theory can be understood, and elaborated, in the context of related theories in social psychology. One of the earliest relevant theories is social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986). The basic idea is that people's sense of who they are is based in large part on the groups to which they belong (e.g., Oxford graduates, whites, socialists, revolutionaries). To enhance our self-image, we enhance the image of one or more groups to which we belong. System justification theory (Blasi & Jost, 2006; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004) would make a similar set of predictions when an existing system is perceived as threatened. According to another theory, intergroup emotions theory, this depersonalization and intergroup differentiation is accompanied by emotions that justify and motivate group-serving action (Mackie & Smith, 2015; Miller, 2004; Smith & Mackie, 2010).

A further relevant theory is relative-deprivation theory (Davis, 1959; Runciman, 1966; Stouffer, Suchman, DeVinney, Star & Williams, 1949; Walker & Pettigrew, 1984; Walker & Smith, 2002). The basic idea is that people's reactions to objective deprivation depend on their subjective comparisons both to the situation of others and to their own past situation. Thus, a situation of deprivation might amplify arousal in one individual or group if the individuals or group perceives deprivation relative to others or to its own past situation. A group that once was valued in society—for example, soldiers who have gone off to fight a war that many members of a society now view as mistake—may feel relative deprivation as its members come to realize that their position in society has declined precipitously. A last relevant theory, for purposes of this article, is social-dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). According to this theory, social hierarchies are characterized by a hegemonic group at the top and negative reference groups below them. Hegemonies are maintained by legitimizing myths, such as the importance of age, gender, and other group-established categories, such as ethnicity, socially defined race, or whatever.

Taken together, these theories specify the processes that can lead to hate. Real and symbolic threat to groups, systems, and hierarchies can trigger the generation of stories to justify differentiation from, and discrimination of, outgroups and in so doing accelerate the development and transmission of hate, as in fringe political groups and in cults.

3 ROLES IN THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSMISSION OF HATE

This article deals with how hate (with its components of negation of intimacy, passion, and commitment) develops and is transmitted. Above I have discussed how it develops, but how does it pass from one person or one group to another? In this passage, there are four roles: Perpetrator, Target, Instigator, and Observer. All roles are connected to all other roles, that is, all of the roles are fully transactional with each other.

Hate is typically viewed as occurring between a perpetrator and a target (see essays in Sternberg, 2005a). However, the view presented here is that hate typically involves four distinct kinds of parties to the transaction. The perpetrator and the target, of course, are the standard participants in any model for roles in the experience of hate. But of considerable and perhaps equal importance are the instigator(s) and the observer(s).

The most important party to the transaction may be the observer(s), who constitute(s) the audience for the transaction. They may be people in the same political, religious, or ethnic group as the instigator(s), or they may be people viewing things from the outside, as with citizens of other countries. The goal of the instigator(s) is either to recruit the observer(s) to his or her side, or to neutralize the observer(s)—to keep them uninvolved.

Unfortunately, when instigators seek to gain traction for their leadership by spreading hate, they often attract observer(s) who do nothing or who, over time, move from being observers to being participant/observers to being active participants. Often, these individuals construct elaborate rationalizations for their actions, such as their need to be loyal to their religious or political group, or their need to achieve solidarity with the leader or potential leader.

4 MECHANISMS IN THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSMISSION OF HATE

I have discussed what hate is, its development and transmission. I now discuss a novel model of mechanisms that elaborate on the basic processes described above. The model of these mechanisms has as its acronym FLOTSAM. The seven elements of the FLOTSAM model of the development and transmission of hate are: Fear, License, Obedience to authority, Trust, Sense of belonging to a valued group, Amplification of Arousal, and Modeling.

FLOTSAM is a prototype-based model (Rosch, 1975, 1978; Smith & Medin, 1981). That is, none of the factors is individually necessary nor are the factors taken together jointly sufficient for the development and transmission of hate. Rather, the development and transmission of hate is more likely as the number of factors and their salience to people experiencing hate increases. When I refer to hate as being “transmitted,” I refer to it as going through a process whereby it will pass or spread to another individual. That is, in this model, hate is infectious: It passes from one person or group to another much as does a virus, and to similarly bad effect. As such, any one or two of these elements may seem harmless, much as the components of a bomb may seem harmless in themselves. But as ingredients are combined and interact with each other, their danger increases, and finally, when there are enough ingredients, they become explosive. Each of these elements is considered in turn.

5 FEAR

Fear is an unpleasant and unwelcome emotion that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or likely to be a threat (LaBar, 2016). Fear, of course, is central to other theories of hate and related phenomena. McCaulley (2016) viewed hate as arising, in part, from fear. In the story component of the duplex theory of hate (Sternberg, 2003; Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008), the death story is directly based on fear—that the hated adversary may be seeking one's death or the death of those for whom one cares. Of note, terror-management theory (Greenberg et al., 1990) is also based on fear of death—that one manages large parts of one's life (and including hate-based behavior) based on fear of mortality, which of course can be a result of adverse action by hated adversaries. Another story emanating out of fear is the subtle-infiltrator theory, whereby one fears that the safety of oneself and one's loved ones are threatened by infiltrators—Nazis, Communists, hidden-cell terrorists, or these days, “sneaky” Democrats (for Republicans) or “sneaky” Republicans (for Democrats). Arguably fear is, in large part, socially learned (Olsson & Phelps, 2007). Fear serves two functions in the development and transmission of hate.

The first function of fear is to create an aversion to, and even hate toward, a target group—for example, spurious claims by instigators that Jews were attempting secretly to undermine and control Germany before World War II Germany, or that hordes of immigrants are stealing jobs from natives. Nazi propaganda showed photos of Jews who looked downright frightening (Rhodes, 1993) and American photos of German soldiers were not much, if any better. In these cases, instigators use fear to drive hate and its propagation (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008). The goal of the instigator is to recruit as many perpetrators as possible and to keep observers at least neutral rather than oppositional to the instigator's goal.

The second function of fear is to keep observers from thwarting the goals of the instigators or the perpetrators. If the observers are afraid to get involved for fear that they may themselves be harmed, the perpetrators and/or instigators will be more likely to succeed in their goals. During the genocide in Rwanda, some of the first people to be executed were not Tutsis, but rather Hutus who were seen as actual or potential traitors—those who were sympathetic to the Tutsis or who were seen as oppositional to the planned genocide. Hutus were encouraged to turn in not only hated Tutsis, but supposed Hutu traitors (Gourevitch, 1998; Prunier, 1995). Similarly, during the Nazi genocide, a likely ticket to a concentration camp, or to death, was to harbor a member of a persecuted group. In the Cambodian genocide, the mere appearance of being an intellectual was enough to place one at risk of death (Kiernan, 1996). Policies such as these were intended to instill fear. One could join the persecutors and be safe or join the persecuted and risk death, often by unspeakable means.

Fear can lead to reactions of either fight or flight. If one simultaneously hates and fears a dictator, such as Hitler, or a would-be dictator, one can either choose to fight or flee the tyrant. Sometimes, these reactions alternate with each other. For example, one may seek to flee, and finding flight impossible, decide to fight. Or one may fight, and seeing that the fight is futile, then decide to flee. In sum, one can come to hate those whom one fears or one can be driven to hate to avoid oneself becoming an object of hate. Either way, fear plays a role in the propagation of hate.

6 LICENSE

Many religions, and certainly those in the Judeo-Christian tradition, teach one not to hate. For example, 1 John 4:20 says “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” 1 John 2:11 says, “But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” Proverbs 26: 24–26 says “Whoever hates disguises himself with his lips and harbors deceit in his heart; when he speaks graciously, believe him not, for there are seven abominations in his heart; though his hatred be covered with deception, his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.” Yet some of the worst hatred and violence in history has been perpetrated by those who purport to adhere to the Bible, whether in the medieval Crusades, the Thirty Years War of the 17th century.

License is also discussed in McCaulley's (2016) theory of hate, whereby hate can arise not only from fear, but from the anger associated with what is perceived as illegitimate license on the part of others in their actions. In the triangular part of the duplex theory of hate (Sternberg, 2003; Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008), passion in hate tends to be aroused when one senses that an enemy or potential enemy is taking license in actions that are detrimental to one's interests.

How does a cynical leader—an instigator—convince people to override their religious and probably ethical training? One way is by giving them license to hate. The license can take different forms. It can state that only their form of a given religion is correct (e.g., Christianity—Catholics vs. Protestants; Islam—Sunnis vs. Shiites) and that God hates those who practice a different form because they are apostates and therefore worthy only of our own hatred (Keen, 1986). Or the license can take the form of “those who are not with us are against us.” Cults in particular attempt to instill hatred of outsiders by isolating people and subjecting them to a barrage of love from the inside and images of enemies on the outside (Ross, 2014). License further can take the form of innuendoes encouraging hatred toward outsiders. Through their rhetoric, political leaders can provide a license to hate people who threaten the group, such as violent criminals. License to hate is therefore not grounded in a fixed morality, but can be contextually variable depending on leaders, perceived threat, and intergroup relation.

7 OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY

Obedience, as used here, is submission to someone else's authority. In the novel 1984 (Orwell, 1961), the totalitarian state of Oceania is sometimes at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia, and sometimes at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. As well as this story providing both a source of fear, and a license to hate, here the state—the instigator—demands total obedience to authority, which means that when one is required to hate Eurasia and look favorably on Eastasia, one does so, and when one is required to hate Eastasia and look favorably on Eurasia, perhaps a day later, one does that too. Total obedience is enforced with universal surveillance, much in the police states of today and of yesteryear. Of course, one might argue that this happens only in novels. In the early days of Nazi rule, the Soviet Union under Stalin allied with Germany, an alliance sealed by the German-Soviet Union Nonaggression (Molotov-Ribbentrop) Pact of 1939. A short time later, the Germans and the Soviets were at war. Soviet soldiers who were told the Germans were allies soon thereafter were told to shoot to kill them.

Relatedly, one of the stories in the story component of the duplex theory (Sternberg, 2003; Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008) is the controller story, whereby a hated object is hated because he or she controls others who are oppositional to one's interests or even survival. Each side has trouble understanding, in terms of the triangular theory, the commitment of the other side to evil controllers. One may also come to fear relative deprivation (Davis, 1959; Runciman, 1966) and hence hate because others’ seemingly blind obedience (as to Hitler or whoever) threatens one's well-being and even life.

Milgram (2009) was among the first to recognize how obedience to authority could get people to act in hateful ways, even without regard to the particular feelings they have toward a person. Although there are different interpretations of the Milgram experiments (see, e.g., Perry, 2013), there is widespread agreement that they show a level of obedience that few people would have expected, whatever the reasons for that obedience might be. Haslam, Loughnan, and Perry (2014) investigated through meta-analysis the factors that lead to high levels of obedience and concluded that the main factors are the experimenter's forcefulness in giving direction, legitimacy, and consistency; group pressure on the teacher to disobey; the indirectness, proximity, and intimacy of the relation between teacher and learner; and the distance between the teacher and the experimenter.

According to self-perception theory (Bem, 1967), one might expect these actions eventually to generate feelings of hatred corresponding to them. There is some evidence that this can happen even in experimental settings as well as real-world settings (Zimbardo, 2008). The almost inescapable conclusion is that situational factors are powerful in generating hatred and subsequent violence (Blass, 1993). Because people so often are unaware of this, they can get sucked into feelings of hate without even realizing it.

Autocrats, whether the dictators of yesterday such as Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany, or the autocrats of today, whip up hatred against imagined outside enemies. These imagined enemies serve as a diversion from the corruption and rot pervading the state government, but they also serve to unify the people through their hatred, and pride in their hatred, of targeted groups. A cynical government knows it controls its people when it controls who they hate, when they hate them, and what they do about their hate.

Adolph Eichmann, like many other Nazi officers on trial, excused their murderous behavior by claiming that, in their state, absolute obedience to authority could not be questioned (Arendt, 1964; Stangneth, 2015). If they were told to hate or kill Jews or Roma or people with disabilities, they did what they were told. In the terms of the duplex theory of hate (Sternberg, 2003), the state used its authority to build up the commitment or cognitive component of hate—the belief, often unexamined, that a particular target individual or group was worthy of hate and one's acting upon that hate.

8 TRUST

Trust is a feeling of confidence in the integrity of an individual or group of individuals or an institution. One feels one can rely on the other. We often are not aware of trust until we feel it breaking down (Cook, 2003; Hardin, 2004). Trust is a feeling, but is mediated by levels of oxytocin, with higher levels of oxytocin increasing trust (Kosfeld et al., 2005). Trust also arises out of other theories relevant to hate. In the triangular component of the duplex theory of love (Sternberg, 2006), trust is essentially the cornerstone of intimacy. In the duplex theory of hate, negation of intimacy is a fundamental component of hate (Sternberg, 2003; Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008). Haters often start to trust those who bring out the worst in them and to distrust those who potentially could bring out the best in them. When one sees films from Nazi times, showing enormous crowds adoring Hitler and offering him their total trust, one can understand how trust in a cynical leader—whether Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, or unsavory contemporary leaders—can lead followers to love their leader but hate whatever group the cynical leader targets (Jews, Muslims, Democrats, Republicans, or whomever).

Oddly, sometimes the problem in hate is that people trust their own instincts too much. Staub (1989, 1996) has suggested that perpetrators tend to use just-world thinking (Lerner, 1980). They explain and interpret their violence toward others as a response to the actions, intentions, or character of their victims. As their aggressive actions continue, they are likely to increasingly devalue their victims. That is, they trust their own erroneous thinking, and blame their problems on others rather than on the images arising from themselves that they project onto others.

If you, as a potential perpetrator, are told to hate someone, and are actually going to do it, then it helps if you trust the instigator of hate. Teachers are, for many children, probably the most trusted people next to their parents. In schools in various parts of the world, instead of being taught the kinds of critical thinking that might be used to combat hate (Sternberg, 1985b), students in some educational institutions are taught to hate (Hogg & Blacklock, 2011). In Nazi Germany, many Germans trusted their government to tell them the truth about the enemies Germany was facing after the hugely discouraging period of Weimar Germany. Instead they got propaganda designed to lead them to hatred of imaginary enemies, such as Jews, Roma, and people with various kinds of disabilities, that served the government's purpose.

During the early 1950s, in the United States, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his colleagues created propaganda about imagined conspiracies pervading society that were all set to destroy U.S. society (Charles River Editors, 2015). And earlier in U.S. history, hatred against various groups was widespread (Quarles, 1999). Today, there are roughly 892 hate groups operating with the United States (Southern Poverty Law Center, n.d.), spreading their message of hate nationwide. There are even Christian hate groups, a strange perversion of a religion that was explicitly based on the precept of love of others (Hamilton, 2014). Similar groups exist in Europe and around the world. Hate groups are bad enough in themselves, but these days, some leader encourage rather than discourage their actions. When political and even religious leaders encourage hate, whether Hitler, Stalin, or any of a number of contemporary leaders, they often do so not in the name of hate, but rather, in the name of a moral imperative—as something one does to do the “right thing” (Zajonc, 2000). Perhaps there is no more dangerous form of hate than that diffused in the name of a supposed moral imperative to hate.

9 SENSE OF BELONGING

Psychologists long have recognized the importance to people of the need for affiliation (McClelland, 1988; Zimbardo & Formica, 1963). The need for affiliation or for a sense of belonging to some group seems to be a fundamental part of human nature (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Leaders seeking to inspire hate in targeted groups use this motivation to affiliate to accomplish their ends. Acolytes of terrorist groups may be told that they can be part of a group that will profoundly and positively change the world (Atran & Ginges, 2012). Similarly, cults attract people who often feel that they lack roots by giving them a sense of belonging (Atkins, 2011; Ross, 2014). Once the individuals are deeply embedded in the cult, they are taught to view many outsiders as threats and, according to Wright (2013), often, as hated adversaries.

Hate groups—and especially those that specialize in demonizing outsiders—thrive by creating a sense of belong among themselves. Indeed, von Hippel (2015; Gonsalkorale & von Hippel, 2012) has found that hate groups thrive both by encouraging a tight sense of belonging within the group and a sense of hatred toward anyone not favored by, or in some cases, a part of the tightly knit group. Indeed, cults thrive by emphasizing the ingroup-outgroup differences.

A central story in the duplex theory of hate (Sternberg, 2003; Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008); is the stranger (vs. ingroup) story. One feels intimacy and commitment toward one's own group but negation of intimacy and perhaps commitment to hate toward the targeted outgroup. As Post (1999) has pointed out, the more different is the stranger among us, the more readily available is the stranger for externalization (i.e., to become the object of hate). Cynical leaders can create hated targets in order to cement cohesiveness among the ingroup and loyalty to themselves (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008).

Often governments with cynical ends create cohesive youth groups that target those who refuse to, or who are believed to refuse to, join in the government-sponsored political beliefs. Examples were Hitler Youth, the Italian Fascist Youth Group, the Lord's Resistance Army in several countries in Africa, the Nashi in Russia, and the colectivos in Venezuela today. Young people and especially young men are particularly effective enforcers of government-imposed hatred for much the same reason young people join gangs—because they are less inhibited, less wise, physically stronger, and more assertive (i.e., testosterone-driven) than most other groups (Howell & Griffiths, 2015).

Hatred or at least extreme dislike against a group can result even when groups are randomly assigned (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 2010). When one views the Zimbardo prison experiment (http://www.prisonexp.org/), one finds that both prisoners and guards were remarkably fast at identifying with their respective randomly assigned groups. That is, even when there was no particular reason for joining one group or another, subjects quickly felt a sense of belonging to the assigned group. In the United States today, two groups battle each other fiercely, the Crips and the Bloods, although it is unclear there is any meaningful difference between them. Indeed, people affiliate strongly, sometimes violently, with athletic teams, often in large part for a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves (Bannon, 2014).

10 AMPLIFICATION OF AROUSAL

Arousal is a motivational state where one feels energized or somehow activated. It is physiologically identifiable in the brain (Pfaff, 2006). In the triangular theory of hate (Sternberg, 2003), arousal is the key to the passion component of hate. To create the conditions where individuals will act violently, manipulative individuals, or groups often try to amplify people's level of arousal against individuals or groups. Frequently, the manipulation is down through propaganda (Keen, 1986; Rhodes, 1993) that portrays targets in extremely unfavorable stories—as rapists, pillagers, thieves, cockroaches, or whatever.

Amplification of arousal is directly related to the passion component of the triangular component of the duplex theory of hate (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008). Passion is basically a high level of arousal directed that, in hate, is directed toward a target individual or group. Several of the stories in the story component of the theory are relevant to amplification of arousal. For example, the enemy of God story paints enemies not as unbelievers, but as thwarters of a holy entity. The barbarian story depicts enemies as crude barbarians intending to destroy civilization as we know it. The impure-other shows the enemy as impure and as seeking to destroy any whose purity the enemy is so envious of.

According to Mace (1997), Stalinism “attempted to explain the world as a struggle between different categories of people, some of whom were considered inherently deleterious and whose elimination was an essential prerequisite toward the attainment of a new and better state of affairs” (p. 80). Stalin created moral-bankruptcy and impure-enemy stories to vanquish his enemies (Sternberg, 2003; Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008). His tactics were similar to Hitler's, except that he used class rather than race as a basis for targeting groups to be eliminated (Mace, 1997). And in McCaulley's (2016) theory, both fear and anger represent amplifications of arousal. Arousal also can be amplified by one's lower position on a social-dominance hierarchy (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). One comes to think of those above one on the hierarchy as having usurped one's rightful position, and one may wish to see one in their place—that is, higher in the hierarchy.

Of course, there are circumstances in which it is easy to see why individuals would hate others. For example, if one returns early from a professional convention and finds one's spouse in bed with an individual who one had thought was one's best friend, then anyone would expect quick activation of the passion component of hate. But in many cases, the mechanisms of arousal depend on more complex situational variables, such as economic uncertainty, a history of violence, or feelings of unfairness toward a particular group.

With regard to economic slump, one has to look beyond macroeconomic conditions. A country may be doing well because the economic performance of its wealthy members hides the pain of the rest. In the case of the United States, incomes have been polarizing for many years, and the polarization increased during and after the economic slump of 2008; about 47% of people in the United States indicated in a survey that to find $400 for unexpected expenses, they would have to borrow money or sell something (Gabler, 2016). Thus, the wealth of the country is rising, but only for those relatively small numbers who optimally are benefiting from the existing system. Such economic losses lead to loss of trust in institutions, especially when the government boasts of statistics indicating economic progress. The shrinking of the middle-class results in social humiliation, as people who once were middle class drop into lower socioeconomic classes and can no longer afford the lifestyle they once had. And the failure of the political parties to recognize the humiliation people are experiencing—because the parties are run by people who are not experiencing the humiliation and who are not sensitive to it—may create the conditions Bittner has suggested as leading to frustration and hence arousal and aggression (see also Dollard, Miller, Doob, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939).

Arousal can enhance memory (Sharot & Phelps, 2004). Thus, hatred may persist in part because when one is aroused, one remembers so well the stimuli that lead to hatred, as well as their consequences. It may seem odd that people experiencing conditions related to those in the Weimar Republic would start to look for targets, such as immigrants or the “haves” of society (the so-called “1%”), or whomever. But people often do not understand what is happening to them or why it is happening, so they look for targets, and may come to hate the targets, real or imagined, especially if leaders or aspirational leaders amplify their arousal, thereby whipping up their passions. In such circumstances, they may find demagogues—toxic leaders—especially appealing (Kellerman, 2004; Lipman-Blumen, 2006). The more the leaders whip up powerful stories, even ones of hate, the more people follow them (Sternberg, 2008).

11 MODELING

The final mechanism in the FLOTSAM model is modeling, or basing one's behavior on that of one or more others, based on observation of that individual or those individuals. In some ways, it is the most important mechanism, for reasons discussed by Bandura (1973, 1985). Just as children model their parents and teachers, adults model their leaders. Cynical leaders not only give license to hate, they model the behavior for their constituents, whether through the many hate groups that exist around the world, or, unfortunately, through government positions, including top-level ones (Bandura, 2016). As novelists have pointed out through thinly disguised possible future-history scenarios, it could happen anywhere (Lewis, 2014; Roth, 2005). When leaders give their followers license to hate and model it, the ethical standards of a country drift inexorably downward (Sternberg, 2012a, 2012b). Standards for ethical behavior begin to dissolve, and lesser leaders capitulate, endorsing and even mimicking the words and actions of the stronger leaders. Unfortunately, one really cannot know who will capitulate to group-endorsed hatred until people are placed in the position of having to decide what they stand for.

Modeling is a crucial element for the transmission of hate. Cynical leaders model the infusion of hatred and its resultants as an integral and necessary part of societal mores. Individuals are made to feel that hatred is proper and just, and that it is something any good and reasonable person should experience and act upon toward the targeted group. In the duplex theory (Sternberg, 2003; Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008), the criminal story is especially well suited to inspiring modeling. Citizens are called upon to serve their country (or ethnic group, or religious group, or whatever) by amplifying the policing of criminals.

12 INTERACTIONS OF THE COMPONENTS OF DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSMISSION

FLOTSAM in itself is inactive. It tends to stay in one place unless there is some force to move it. The same is true of hate. It needs “current” to move it from one place to another. Those currents are provided by cynical leaders who capitalize on people's insecurities to bolster their own power, by mass reactions to genuine injustices that then take an ugly turn, or by systematic instruction, including in schools. As with FLOTSAM, the components bump into each other, sometimes providing a kind of kinetic energy to increase the rate at which hate diffuses. There is no fixed system to this mutual bumping. For example, fear can lead to arousal, which in turn can lead to seeking a trusted authority to protect one's interests, and perhaps one's life. Or trust can lead to obedience to a trusted authority, who first incites fear, then arousal, and then a sense of license to attack members of targeted group. Or if a valued group of which one is a member is feeling threatened, it may start looking for a leader to protect it, and that leader may in turn arouse the group to violence. The point is that there is no one fixed sequence of events that leads to the development and transmission of hate. Rather, different factors can come together in different ways to lead hate and its components to spread from one individual, and later one group to another, inciting violence and possibly even massacres and genocides.

13 CONCLUSION

I have suggested in this article a model, FLOTSAM, according to which seven mechanisms operate by which hate develops and is transmitted in contemporary society as in the past. These mechanisms operate to facilitate hate from perpetrator to target, and to keep observers from interfering with hate or to convince them actually to join in the hate. The mechanisms encourage negation of intimacy, incite passion, and build commitment to hatred of one or more targets. Although there are a number of theories of hate (see essays in Sternberg, 2005a), this model is perhaps unique in seeking to interactively specify the elements of the transmission of hate.

The seven mechanisms are Fear, License, Obedience to authority, Trust, Sense of belonging to a valued group, Amplification of arousal, and Modeling. These are not the only mechanisms that can be involved in the development and transmission of hate, and those mechanisms may vary somewhat across time and cultural factors. For example, prejudice certainly can be a basis of hate (Dovidio, Gaertner, & Pearson, 2005), although it still needs a mechanism for development and transmission. Even if we understand hate, however, eliminating it remains as a paramount challenge (Aronson, 2001; Dozier, 2002; Sternberg, 2005b, 2005c).

The issue of development and transmission of hate is not a theoretical abstraction. It is highly relevant to the times in which we live, times in which authoritarian or at least illiberal governments are cropping up all over the world. The threat of governments that target particular groups—whether ethnicities or religious groups within their own countries or immigrants of whatever ethnicities from elsewhere—remains.

Are there any mechanisms for combating the development and transmission of hate? Although a detailed discussion of such mechanisms is beyond the scope of this article, there seem to be at least four mechanisms that seem appropriate. These mechanisms are love, critical thinking, wisdom, and engagement with members of target groups (Sternberg, 2016).

It is not clear that there is any magic bullet for curing hate. But any mechanism that helps one understand things from others’ points of view—love, critical thinking, wisdom, engagement with members of target groups—at least makes hate less likely, because it is harder to hate people if you understand that in many respects they are not all so different from you.

FLOTSAM is not presented as a complete or somehow “final” model for the development and transmission of hate. Certainly, other factors may be involved, and exactly what these factors are is likely to vary as a function of the context in which the development and transmission of hate occurs. Rather, FLOTSAM is presented as an entry model that may encourage others to think of the variety of factors that can occur in the transmission of hate.

FLOTSAM is a new model that has not yet been formally tested. But it does lend itself to empirical test. A first possible test is correlational. The theory predicts that, as the development and transmission of hate rises, so will levels of each of the components of FLOTSAM. Contemporary society provides a basis for testing the model, because reactions to sudden surges in immigration—legal as well as illegal—and rising influence of extremist political parties has created in many parts of the world a dynamic different from that of only a few years ago. In some countries, leaders advocating hate have come out into the open in a way perhaps not seen, at least openly, since the Second World War, marking a rise in hate among their followers. Hate against particular groups (such as illegal immigrants) could be measured by a hate scale, such as that of Weis (2006). The components of FLOTSAM could be measured by targeted questioning in interviews or questionnaires addressing levels of fear, license, obedience to an authority inspiring hate, trust, sense of belonging to a valued group, amplification of arousal, and modeling of other haters. The prediction is that as levels of hate rise and fall across members of a society, so will the components of FLOTSAM. In particular, there should be a small-time lag, with the components of FLOTSAM rising just before the levels of hate.

The design described above for studying hate is correlational—seeing whether the levels of FLOTSAM components increase with increases in hate. Of course, a second option is that whereby FLOTSAM could be studied experimentally by inducing the components of FLOTSAM and then determining whether increases increase in levels of these components directed at a target increases hate for that target (see Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008). Realistically, it would be difficult to design such an experiment ethically (see Sternberg & Fiske, 2015).

A third option would be a scenario-based study, in which subjects receive fairly detailed descriptions of individual and group hate. Participants then would be asked to rate the components of FLOTSAM as well as levels of hate. Such a design can work (Sternberg & Sternberg, 2008) but has all the usual disadvantages of scenario-based studies in terms of whether they represent the feelings people would experience if they were in those situations. No single method, of course, is perfect, and converging operations probably would yield the most reliable and valid results.

Hate, its development, and its transmission are not highly popular topics of study among psychologists in any field of psychology. Hate does not lend itself well to study in a laboratory; people who hate can be dangerous, and understanding and resolving hate where it has built up over a long period of time with much complexity is an extremely difficult task (Kelman, Wintersteiner, & Graf, 2016). But the world is confronting serious issues regarding hate and its transmission, and these problems will not be solved if we fail to tackle the issues because they are too hard, too far from mainstream social psychology, or even potentially too dangerous to study through psychological research. We need to understand how hate is transmitted, and FLOTSAM may provide one step in terms of addressing this issue.