1 Hostile Emotions and Group Attitudes

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the relevance of emotions for public debate, ideological attitudes, and the relationships between politics, the media, and claims to truth. Under the catchword “post-truth,” (Peters et al. 2018) a way of thinking and acting in which emotional dispositions more than verifiable facts are the focus of politics has been critically discussed. Collective temperaments and individual manifestations of discomfort, particularly through expressions of anger and rage, can be found in all kinds of media outlets. The social mechanisms underlying these phenomena call for an investigation of their emotional foundations and implications on the part of philosophers and psychologists.

A main focus of such research concerns inter-group attitudes. Positive feelings such as love, compassion, and sympathy open the prospect of living together in solidarity. On the other hand, negative feelings of anger, hatred, disgust, fear, and aversion can lead to aggressive self-assertion and the violent exclusion of supposed “others.” While research on “political emotions” has produced considerable literature in philosophy, sociology, political science, and history in recent years (Goodwin et al. 2001; Nussbaum 2013; Demertzis 2014; Plamper 2015; Szanto and Slaby 2020), the descriptive and conceptual clarification of the group of aversive other-directed emotions remains an important desideratum. What these emotions have in common is hostility and a characteristic of creating or reinforcing boundaries between in-groups and out-groups.

But what exactly are “hostile emotions”? The label encompasses emotions such as antipathy, jealousy, ressentiment, disgust, hatred, and contempt, which, for themselves and in combination, form personal attitudes and influence our relationships with others. The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together approaches from philosophy and psychology to elucidate the conceptual issues and empirical findings concerning these emotions.

2 Varieties of Emotions

Emotions are a pervasive dimension of human experience and they play a significant part in determining how we react to the environment around us. Among them, hostile emotions stand out as a category that is both complex and varied, with its own set of traits and ramifications. The contributions assembled in this issue investigate the broader theoretical frameworks in which to understand hostile emotions, discuss the circumstances that cause them to manifest, analyze the behavioral and cognitive correlates of hostile emotions, and ask for their role in socialization and enculturation.

To understand these parameters better, we can take a step back and look at the nature of the emotions in general within the broader domain of affective phenomena. Emotions are complex experiences that are embedded in a nexus of physiological arousal (Herman et al. 2018), hedonic valences (Goldstein 2002), subjective feelings (LeDoux & Hoffmann 2018), cognitive appraisal (Omdahl 2014), motivational tendencies (Lowe 2011), and expressive behavioral responses (Ekman 1993). There is a whole spectrum of bodily, affective, and normative phenomena relevant to emotional experiences, ranging from sensory impressions to moods and atmospheres, to judgments. Emotions disclose the world as being in a certain way, thereby evaluating situations according to their relevance for the perceiving agent, particularly regarding its well-being or potential dangers to it. Such evaluations are not only determined by the physical affordances of the environment and the biological structures and behavioral repertoires of the agent. Emotions are also partly socially constructed and shaped by cultural norms, values, and practices. Therefore, there is a great variability and context-dependence of emotional experiences across different cultures and historical periods.

Sensory impressions pertain to all types of information mediated by the sense organs, as in the seeing of a color, the smelling of a scent, etc. They are direct experiences of the external world and do not necessarily yield certain cognitions or evaluations. In response to them, feelings can be regarded as subjective experiences that frequently correlate with physiological reactions and can vary from enjoyable to unpleasant (e.g., experiences of warmth, coldness, comfort, discomfort, pleasure, or pain). Compared to emotions, feelings are less intricate, more direct, and structured in a simpler fashion. Emotions, then, are complex mental states as outlined above. They are usually short and intense responses to particular events or stimuli and possess motivational significance, exerting influence over behavior and decision-making (e.g., the outrage in face of a perceived cruelty, which leads to a wish for retribution). Compared to the acute nature of emotions, moods are more enduring and less situation-dependent. They are pervasive and can last for hours, days, or even weeks, potentially becoming dispositional qualities or background feelings, framing the overall outlook a person has on the world (e.g., happiness, sadness, irritability, or calmness). Atmospheres, finally, reflect the general affective appearance of a location, setting, or circumstance. They point beyond emotions and feelings, as they are attributed to environments and amount to the combined outcome of perceptions and temperaments within a surrounding which displays features that have the power to trigger specific affective responses. In contrast to individually felt emotions or moods, atmospheres can have a more comprehensive impact, influencing the emotional ambiance of an entire space or situation, in which many individuals can participate (think, e.g., of the mass euphoria in a football stadium).

The experience of hostile emotions, both subjective and intersubjective, is characterized by a sense of arousal, which is frequently accompanied with a skewed perception of reality being experienced by the individual. During interpersonal interactions, hostile emotions can lead to a breakdown in communication, which in turn can create an atmosphere that is fraught with conflict and tension. When a person is confronted with circumstances that represent perceived dangers to their well-being, position, or ideals, they are more likely to be in such affective states. The emotional response is determined by individual characteristics, societal standards, and personal experiences, being triggered by a variety of factors, including social competition, real or imagined injustices, and threats to autonomy.

Behavioral correlates of hostile emotions may range from subjectively felt but not externalized feelings of inferiority, to verbal aggression, to physical confrontation. Individuals can be motivated to assert dominance, safeguard their interests, or resort to retaliation against perceived threats while they are experiencing hostile emotions. Within the context of socialization and enculturation, the formation and manifestation of hostile emotions are influenced by factors such as the family, the community, and larger societal forces. By contributing to the establishment of appropriate outlets for animosity or the suppression of such feelings, cultural norms and social expectations play a role.

3 Contents of the Issue

This Special Issue starts with “A Framework for the Emotional Psychology of Group Membership” by Taylor Davis and Daniel Kelly, a novel theoretical approach to the complexities of intergroup relations, in particular the unfavorable treatment of outgroups and the bias toward ingroups. The paper examines the existing literature dedicated to these phenomena and identifies the lack of a conceptual unification. By drawing on etiological functionalism and the dual inheritance theory of human evolution, the authors shed light on the intricacies of intergroup connections by employing a “molecular” approach to emotions and establishing a taxonomy of the emotions that impact social interactions, including both hostile and amicable encounters. While etiological functionalism places emphasis on causal origins of psychological phenomena, the dual inheritance hypothesis investigates the interaction between genetic and cultural evolution in the development of psychological mechanisms, on the basis of which hostile and benevolent emotions can be theorized.

The second paper by Marco Meyer, Mark Alfano, and Boudewijn de Bruin under the title “The Development and Validation of the Epistemic Vice Scale” delves into character traits such as gullibility, rigidity, and indifference to evidence and knowledge, which can have tremendous effects on the processing of information. These vices are studied in the context of post-truth ways of thinking and conspiracy theories. The authors construct and validate a ten-item Epistemic Vice Scale by means of two observational survey studies carried out on the crowdsourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk, shedding light on the underlying psychological characteristics, with the hypothesis that individuals who have epistemic vices may be more prone to receiving and internalizing false information. While the studied phenomena belong to the sphere of cognition more than emotion, they are connected to affective dispositions which can underpin hostile responses towards claims to argumentation, reason, and truth.

The remainder of the Special Issue is devoted to in-depth analyzes of particular hostile emotions, namely anger, envy, ressentiment, and hate. Laura Silva discusses the question “Is Anger a Hostile Emotion?” and critically examines the widespread idea that anger is primarily motivated by a desire for retribution and the corresponding categorization of anger as an aggressive emotion. Taking a dual approach to description and diagnosis, the paper provides an understanding of the historical factors that have contributed to the punitive concept of anger and presents an alternative viewpoint that frames anger as primarily demanding recognition of harms done and the just treatment of injuries. As the author proposes a shift of focus from vengeance to acknowledgment, she opens up a new perspective for the interpretation of anger.

Jens Lange & Sara Protasi in their paper “An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Value of Envy” then take issue with another orthodox belief in the literature, namely that envy is a morally undesirable emotion. The authors challenge this widespread condemnation, which originates from a poor grasp of the complexity of envy or from a narrow approach to evaluating the value of emotional experiences. By combining insights from philosophy and empirical psychology, they show that envy should not be regarded as a singular, all-encompassing force of negativity. Rather, this emotion can yield a range of effects, not just on the individual but also on a societal level with instrumental value in the promotion of prudentially and morally beneficial outcomes. The differentiation between benign and malicious forms of envy helps to gain a descriptively as well as evaluatively more nuanced picture of envy.

The following paper by Natalie Rodax, Markus Wrbouschek, Katharina Hametner, Sara Paloni, Nora Ruck, and Leonard Brixel is entitled “Ressentiment as Morally Disclosive Posture? Conceptual Issues from a Psychological Point of View”. As they observe, there is still a lack of conceptual understanding regarding the phenomenon of ressentiment, which is frequently referred to in psychological studies as a negative emotional response directed at perceived “inferior others,” compared to the Nietzschean interpretation of ressentiment in philosophy as an assignment of blame for one’s frustration to somebody else and its inherent jealousy (Nietzsche 2009, §§ 10–11). The inferiority complex in the face of its supposed “cause” generates a rejecting value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one’s frustration. The purpose of their paper is to move from the loosely defined framework of “other-condemning” moral emotions and to understand the complexities of ressentiment. They suggest a nuanced understanding of ressentiment as a complicated sentiment, a perceptual tool, and a habitualized, embodied comportment that emerges in morally significant everyday settings. This understanding is based on Withy’s concept of “disclosive posture” (Withy 2014). Thereby, the similarities (and differences) to the closely related concept of hatred are elucidated in order to embed the analysis of ressentiment in a broader social framework.

Finally, in her paper “Hate: toward a Four-Types Model”, Íngrid Vendrell Ferran provides a sophisticated analysis of hate by relying on lessons from philosophy and psychology, proposing that hate is a fundamental way of viewing the other as essentially bad. This is a departure from conventional typologies, which base the emotion in patterns of other affective states, and of traditional definitions such as the Aristotelian one of hate as frozen and generalized anger or rage (Aristotle 2018; II, 4). Through the examination of the historical development and deliberative structure of hate, a new and more comprehensive model consisting of four types of hate is established: normative, ideological, retributive, and malicious. The author explores a number of variables that modulate hate and that include the replaceability or irreplaceability of the target, and the determinacy or indeterminacy of what hate is concerned with.

4 Origin of the Issue and Acknowledgements

This Special Issue has its roots in a workshop held at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) of the University of Bielefeld (Germany) in March 2019. Some of the contributors of this issue first presented their ideas at that meeting, while others joined via an open call for papers. I thank all participants of the workshop for the inspiring discussions we have had. In particular, I am grateful for the support of Dr. Marc Schalenberg, who facilitated the organization of the workshop and inspired this publication greatly by providing the amicable and intellectual environment for the fruitful conversations we had there. Finally, I would like to thank the editor of RoPP, Prof. Paul Egré, for his encouragement and patience in the process of putting together this collection as well as his insightful suggestions along the way.