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Why people are sometimes horrible to one another
Thursday, 15 December 2005
There are many times in your life when you will experience someone being nasty to you. This can be very upsetting, but it is part of living.
Understanding why people are motivated to be horrible can help you deal with these situations and possibly form strategies to reduce their ill effects. While there can be all sorts of reasons for general nastiness, the three below are the most common.
The competition for resources
We live in a world where resources are limited. Whether the resource in question is money, romantic partners, private space, jobs, investment opportunities or possessions; there's just not enough to go around in order to satisfy everyone's needs. This leads to one of the most common reasons for conflict between people - competition for resources.
Here are some imaginary situations to give you the general idea. Obviously, these are just examples. I don't really mean you any harm!
If I view you as a rival for someone I'm interested in partnering up with, I have an incentive to discourage you from competing with me. Trying to make you feel bad or even physically injuring you is one possible strategy for doing this.
If we work together and you're a challenger for a promotion I want, one obvious way I can discourage you is by making you look bad.
If you trespass on what I consider to be my property, I may choose to let you know by threatening you with violence.
If we're negotiating a financial transaction, and I think I can get more money from you by bullying you, I have an incentive to do so.
The competition for resources is a powerful motivator for people to commit malicious acts against one another. In the wild, animals often kill in the contest for territory, mates and food. Such instincts can spill over into humanity on occasion.
The thirst for power
Reality can be a harsh and scary place. It never seems to take the form we want it to. In the human world, having power over other people is one way to bend reality more towards our wishes. Being nasty in the right circumstances can appear to some people as a viable way to achieve this.
A good example of this is slavery - which is forced work by threat of violence. If I'm a plantation owner in the South two hundred years ago and I want my crop planted but I don't want to do it myself, I can force a slave to do it for me. The more slaves I have such power over, the more I can use them to mold reality into a form that I like.
If I'm a political activist, and a government isn't behaving the way I want it to, I may believe the threat of terrorism could force them to change their minds.
If I run a company, and my employees aren't producing enough for me to be successful, I may be tempted to shout at them.
If I'm an averagely popular kid at school, being nasty to other less popular kids may boost my own power.
Humans have a natural thirst for power over the world around them. Sometimes, being horrible can seem like a good way of getting it.
Trying to pass pain onto others
Why are people malicious when it seems like there's no good reason to be? Sometimes, it's an attempt to pass on pain to others.
We all carry around a certain amount of emotional pain within us. Bad experiences can throb inside like injuries that never healed. In a desperate attempt to rid ourselves of this pain, sometimes we find ourselves trying to pass it onto others.
The belief goes like this: If someone has said something mean to me, maybe I can make the pain they caused go away by saying something mean to someone else.
Of course, this strategy doesn't work. Emotional pain can only be dealt with by facing it. It cannot be thrown onto another person. All this does is create even more pain in the world.
This is obvious, but it doesn't stop people trying it out all the time.
So there you are, the three primary reasons people are horrible to one another. A problem understood is a problem half solved. I hope the above is helpful when you're dealing with difficult people.
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