8 Scientific Reason Why People Are The Worst
7. The "Hate Circuit"
As much as "The Hate Circuit" sounds like a Nirvana EP, it's actually a little vortex of hate lodged deep in your own brain.
According to researchers at UCL, there are structures in your cortex and sub cortex that kick into overdrive when you see someone that you hate. This is distinct from fear or disgust and wouldn't be activated if you looked at a picture of a spider, for example. Conversely, areas associated with fear, anger and threat, such as the the amygdala and the hippocampus, are not activated when you feel feelings of hate, seemingly indicating that hate is not associated with our danger avoidance instincts.
So which parts of the brain does the hate circuit interact with? Well, it actually shares a couple of brain structures, specifically the putamen and insula, that are associated with feelings of love. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can't have nice things.
It is thought that this has something to do with "the preparation of aggressive acts in a romantic context" which means ensuring that love rivals don't get between you and your need to procreate (i.e. having a punch up in a car park over a girl). The scientists at UCL think that this crossover between love and hate could be the actual, scientific reason behind with there is classically such a fine line between the two.