Prejudice

Motivated people often have a strong positive reference group - an imaginary social group with characteristics considered as desirable and worth following, and a negative reference group - a culture one looks at with disdain and hatred. We deploy our intensity of adoration and disgust for these groups as a marker of our identity - "I love this. I hate that.".

Not having intense reference groups is characteristic of indecisive people, while too intense an attachment with reference groups can be a sign of emotional illness. We attach too strongly with reference groups when we are devoid of such attachment from people in our proximity - creating a condition termed by sociologists as 'The Marginal Man' : Someone who doesn't feel belonged with social group he lives in, while struggling to gain acceptance in the social group he aspires to be a part of.

Our socialisation process makes use of these imaginary reference groups to provide us guidance and disincentivise the development of undesirable traits within us by labelling them as an evil that is exclusivity of the negative reference group. This is not always a healthy development and is responsible for social ills of stereotyping, stigmatising, discrimination, hate crimes. Our dependence on hatred for others to base love for our own upon makes us weak in terms of emotional integrity, thereby making us sheeps of hypocrisy. It also makes us inaccurate and ineffective at knowing and exploring people, as our view of them is clouded with our lenses of prejudice and quick-judgement of whole personality based on one or two qualities. The phenomenon is popularly referred to as 'The Horn Effect' or 'The Halo Effect'.

Is it unavoidable to hate our opposites to be able to love ourselves?