Hostility: Definition, Examples, & Psychology​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
Hostility is a negative orientation toward other people and the expectation that they will do things we dislike. How do people develop a hostile mindset?
*This page may include affiliate links; that means we earn from qualifying purchases of products.
Nobody who knows me would ever call me a hostile person, but I have had hostility simmering under the surface. Catch me in a bad mood--overwhelmed by professional responsibilities, or feeling stuck in an interpersonal conflict, or both at the same time—and the way I see other people starts to change. It’s not that I think they’re bad all of a sudden, but I do start to focus more on what they might expect of me. 
What if it’s a request or a need that I can’t meet? Suddenly the pressure feels like it’s building, and now I’m looking at that person as a threat rather than as another human being who wants to interact with me in a meaningful way.

Thankfully, these periods of time in my life are much, much briefer than they used to be. But I can remember well, in the most stressful months of my life, how cautious and disengaged I became. I sometimes call it my “putting out fires” time—everything around me seemed like one more crisis, one more immediate demand that needed to be resolved as soon as possible. For some people, finding other people threatening is unfortunately a way of life. Let’s look at one way people respond to such threats—with hostility—and try to understand how and why this orientation to the world develops in some people.
​Before reading on, if you're a therapist, coach, or wellness entrepreneur, be sure to grab our free Wellness Business Growth eBook to get expert tips and free resources that will help you grow your business exponentially.​​​​​​​​​
Are You a Therapist, Coach, or Wellness Entrepreneur?

Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to
Grow Your Wellness Business Exponentially!

 ✓  Save hundreds of hours of time  ✓  Earn more $ faster  
​✓  Boost your credibility ✓  Deliver high-impact content 

What Is Hostility? (A Definition)​

We can think of hostility as having cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components. On the cognitive end of things, hostility means the expectation that others will make our lives unpleasant or difficult (Barefoot, 1992). This can take the form of mistrust and a cynical attitude toward others. In the world of therapy, I often call this the tendency to assume the worst about somebody.

Emotionally, hostility usually means having an angry response to other people, even when there is clearly no ill-intent on their part (Epps & Kendall, 1995). It is closely related to the cognitive tendency of assuming the worst. If you text your friend group inviting them to grab a drink after work tomorrow night and nobody responds for the rest of the day, your mind might leap to the conclusion that they probably all hate you and are planning something without you. If this is your interpretation, you are likely to feel either sadness or anger (or both) accompanying that thought. That anger goes hand in hand with the negative expectation that your friends are excluding you.

Finally, hostility can take the form of many different behaviors, from pointedly ignoring somebody to lashing out with physical violence. For a behavior to be hostile, it simply has to be related to the belief that the person has done (or is about to do) something that will be hurtful or unpleasant to you.

Let’s look more closely at how cognitions, or thoughts, are at the center of hostility. People high in the trait of hostility seem to have more negative cognitive schemata, or ways of interpreting others, than people low in trait hostility (Guyll & Madon, 2003). For example, when asked to form an impression of somebody new, people high in hostility have a harder time recalling positive information about the person, take longer to develop a favorable impression of the person, and are harsher in their judgments than low-hostility people.​

Another way to characterize this way of thinking is to describe people high in hostility as expecting others to cause them frustration or even aggress against them while also seeing others as less worthy (Smith, 1992). They are trigger-happy (although they are not happy about it). They move through social situations full of suspicion, waiting for the other shoe to drop, collecting data to support their worst fears about how things will unfold. And they are ready to respond with anger and aggressiveness when those suspicions seem to be confirmed in their eyes.

Opposite of Hostility​

The opposite of hostility is agreeableness (Graziano & Eisenberg, 1997). People who are very agreeable like to please others and assume the best of them. Being high in the trait of agreeableness is generally better for one’s well-being than being high in trait hostility. At the same time, while very hostile or antagonistic people can be so off-putting to others that close relationships are difficult to establish and maintain, people very high in agreeableness may have difficulty maintaining necessary boundaries in their relationships.

Causes of Hostility

A primary lens through which psychologists view hostility is that it is a learned response to one’s environment (Guyll & Madon, 2003). In experimental settings, everything from seeing violence in the media to being exposed to disgusting things to having to remain in physical discomfort has been found to increase rates of hostile thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. You can think of this as the “nurture” or “social learning” angle on hostility: When people have experiences where the world is threatening, they learn to anticipate a threatening world in the future.

There is also some evidence that suggests that people high in hostility do not think very well of themselves either (Guyll & Madon, 2003). This seems to argue for a second factor in the development of trait hostility, which is that people may have preexisting tendencies or biases to see the world in a negative light. This could come from a natural inclination to look for and identify threats in one’s environment, as well as a tendency to draw connections to negative rather than positive experiences from one’s past. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, people high in trait hostility are sometimes also anxious or depressed by nature as well.​

Interestingly, although people demonstrate less hostility as they age, there are not age differences in cognitive hostility (Barefoot et al., 1993). This also suggests that hostility is a relatively stable trait over time, not merely something we develop because of our life experiences.

Examples of Hostility

Hostility is likely to be behind instances of cynical, resentful, jealous, bitter, or suspicion-driven thinking and behavior (Smith, 1992). Whenever people are acting from a position where they assume there is a threat in social situations, there is hostility at play. Whether that means getting angry because your partner is having an animated conversation with somebody else, feeling certain that all the other drivers are deliberately trying to slow you down, or wondering what the catch is when your parent calls to say they love you, the common thread throughout is the belief that other people are going to hurt and frustrate you, not help you.

And how’s this for a fascinating study on hostility? Higher trait hostility is related to more experiences with the color red (Fetterman et al., 2015). People high in trait hostility prefer the color red at higher rates, notice it more in their environments, and show an association between color preference and rates of hostile decision-making. Evolutionarily, this may relate to the frequency with which the color red indicates inflammation or anger in our bodies—in other words, it may be a signal of threat in our environments.

Hostile Environments and Harassment

Environments that reduce our responsibility to each other, or where there is little accountability, can easily become hostile. For example, people are more openly hostile about their political beliefs online than in person (Bor & Petersen, 2022). This is to some extent driven by people high in hostility seeking out such environments, but online spaces also offer more anonymity and less accountability than, say, making a speech in front of your local town hall.
​
It has been argued more broadly that hostility can result when there is a mismatch between how we have evolved and the environment we find ourselves in (Bor & Petersen, 2022). I think this is now visible on a global scale: As countries become more diverse and social norms relax around everything from sexual identities to what we wear to work, some people find this diversity and freedom threatening. People high in trait hostility are more likely to respond to changes in their environments that seem to run counter to their own identities with anger and suspicion.

Hostility Attribution Bias​

There is a name for the tendency to assume a threat in social situations. Hostile attribution bias is what psychologists call the tendency to read ambiguous behaviors as hostile (Tuente et al., 2019). People who more readily interpret others as hostile engage in more aggressive behavior, and this pattern has been shown to exist in violent offenders, psychiatric patients, and the general population (Tuente et al., 2019). The hostile attribution bias seems to capture the cognitive aspect of hostility: People become hostile because they misperceive their environments to be more hostile than they actually are.

Hostility in the Workplace

Hostility is a common problem in workplaces as well. People who are hostile at work may be acting from a hostile attribution bias, or they may be experiencing workplace bullying or aggression from their supervisors or colleagues (Gamian-Wilk et al., 2022). Difficult working conditions are also a trigger for hostility in the workplace. To the extent that people perceive their work environments as being unjust or unfair, they are more likely to respond with hostility (Judge et al., 2006).

Hostile Living Environment

Experiencing one’s world as hostile has real health consequences. People high in hostility find their environments to be very stressful and experience changes in their bodily stress management systems as a result (Smith et al., 2014). Their hostile natures put them at greater risk of overall bodily inflammation and increase their susceptibility to heart disease (Smith, 1992).

Psychology of Hostility

People high in hostility are also typically high in neuroticism: They frequently experience negative emotions and have difficulty coping with them (Felsten, 1996). They may or may not verbally or physically demonstrate their hostile anger, but they are definitely feeling its effects. They are also low in agreeableness, meaning they are not very motivated to maintain good relationships with others (Sanz et al., 2010). When they do try to cope with their emotions, it is usually through confrontation, avoidance, or seeking revenge, all of which can make their lives more stressful (Vandervoort, 2006). They also have less social support to lean on and may cope through unhealthy eating habits or poor self-care, all of which increases their risk for negative health outcomes (Smith, 1992).

Quotes on Hostility

  • “If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • “The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.” — Anton Chekhov
  • “Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.” — Sigmund Freud
  • “The greatest level of hostility and venom, really, is between parties closest to each other on the political spectrum.” — Elizabeth May

Articles Related to Hostility

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Hostility

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Hostility​

As I tried to illustrate with my own experience, hostility is a headspace that each of us can find ourselves in, and it is a frame of mind that some people carry with them all the time. Like most everything in human psychology, it is adaptive to a certain extent: If your world has actually been very threatening in the past, assuming there will be more threats in the future is a reasonable and often effective response.

At the same time, this is not a peaceful or enjoyable way to live. I know I tend to avoid the hostile people in my life as much as possible; if you have been hostile toward others, you may notice them trying to avoid you as well. As we learned in this article, some degree of hostility can be baked into our personality, but a lot of it is driven by the experiences we have and the environments we live in too. People high in hostility might want to consider how they can change their environments to avoid difficult and threatening situations and people. They can also turn to mindfulness techniques and psychotherapy to learn how to manage their hostile anger.​

Don't Forget to Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to
Grow Your Wellness Business Exponentially!

References
Are You a Therapist, Coach, or Wellness Entrepreneur?
Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to Grow Your Wellness Business Fast!
Key Articles:Content Packages:
Terms, Privacy & Affiliate Disclosure  |   About   |   Blog   |   Contact   |   FAQs
* The Berkeley Well-Being Institute. LLC is not affiliated with UC Berkeley.
Copyright © 2024, The Berkeley Well-Being Institute, LLC