Science Says Haters Do, In Fact, Have to Hate

Haters to our left and right.

Hello! (Photo: Rap Genius)
Hello! (Photo: Rap Genius)

Thank science for finally providing you with an answer to the question of why you hate everything on this stupid earth. Researchers discovered a portion of your personality called “dispositional attitude” dictates whether you’ve got a flowery outlook or if you’d rather see everyone drop dead.

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“Dispositional attitude” breaks down into two facets: positive and negative. If you suffer with a positive dispositional attitude it means you’re one of those people who just loves everything and probably doesn’t shut up about it. And if you’re a person with a negative dispositional attitude, you have a negative outlook on life, so welcome to the club.

Study authors Justin Hepler and Dolores Albarracín created a scale of unrelated things, like politics, cold showers and soccer (bleh) and asked how much people liked or disliked them. Their responses were then averaged together to determine whether they were positive Pauls or negative Nancys.

Science Daily writes:

Throughout the studies the researchers found that people with generally positive dispositional attitudes are more open than people with generally negative dispositional attitudes. In day-to-day practice, this means that people with positive dispositional attitudes may be more prone to actually buy new products, get vaccine shots, follow regular positive actions (recycling, driving carefully, etc.)

The study doesn’t say if a characteristic on the negative spectrum includes hatereading and mocking listicles.

Science Says Haters Do, In Fact, Have to Hate