Stigma Free Space

The Psychology of Hatred!! You must have seen a lot of hate posts online by Indians targeting people of other countries, religions, regions, and castes. And lately, a lot of hate posts have been written against Indians as well. In my opinion, two psychological principles are playing a significant role here. 1. Principle of Social Proof In his landmark book Influence, Robert Cialdini describes the principle of social proof, which says that "what others think is correct must be correct." So if many people are posting hateful content, it must be okay to post that kind of content too. Even worse, if so many famous people are doing it, it must be cool to indulge in hatred. 2. Availability Heuristic As beautifully explained by Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow, we tend to judge how common something is by how easily examples come to mind. Now think about social media algorithms. They keep showing you the kind of content you have already interacted with, again and again. They also push content that gets more engagement. The result is a perfect recipe for believing that hateful content is extremely widespread. Whether the account posting it is real, a bot, or a paid troll does not matter. To our mind, it feels common, and hence, by social proof, acceptable. People have lost their jobs and livelihoods after falling prey to these psychological traps and posting things they would never say in real life. Please use judgment. Do not fall for hate. Hatred destroys a person from within.