Hostility is seen as a form of emotionally charged aggressive behavior. In everyday speech, it is more commonly used as a synonym for anger and aggression.
For hunter gatherers, every stranger from outside the small tribal group was a potential source of hostility.[1] Similarly, in archaic Greece, every community was in a state of hostility, latent or overt, with every other community - something only gradually tempered by the rights and duties of hospitality.[2]
Tensions between the two poles of hostility and hospitality remain a potent force in the 21st century world.[3]
Us/them
Robert Sapolsky argues that the tendency to form in-groups and out-groups of Us and Them, and to direct hostility at the latter, is inherent in humans.[4] He also explores the possibility raised by Samuel Bowles that intra-group hostility is reduced when greater hostility is directed at Thems,[5] something exploited by insecure leaders when they mobilise external conflicts so as to reduce in-group hostility towards themselves.[6]
Non-verbal indicators
Automatic mental functioning suggests that among universal human indicators of hostility are the grinding or gnashing of teeth, the clenching and shaking of fists, and grimacing.[7]Desmond Morris would add stamping and thumping.[8]
The Haka represents a ritualised set of such non-verbal signs of hostility.[9]
Kelly's model
In psychological terms, George Kelly considered hostility as the attempt to extort validating evidence from the environment to confirm types of social prediction, constructs, that have failed.[10] Instead of reconstructing their constructs to meet disconfirmations with better predictions, the hostile person attempts to force or coerce the world to fit their view, even if this is a forlorn hope, and even if it entails emotional expenditure and/or harm to self or others.[11]
In this sense hostility is a form of psychological extortion - an attempt to force reality to produce the desired feedback,[12] even by acting out in bullying by individuals and groups in various social contexts, in order that preconceptions become ever more widely validated. Kelly's theory of cognitive hostility thus forms a parallel to Leon Festinger's view that there is an inherent impulse to reduce cognitive dissonance.[13]
While challenging reality can be a useful part of life, and persistence in the face of failure can be a valuable trait (for instance in invention or discovery [citation needed]), in the case of hostility it is argued that evidence is not being accurately assessed but rather forced into a Procrustean mould in order to maintain one's belief systems and avoid having one's identity challenged.[14] Instead it is claimed that hostility shows evidence of suppression or denial, and is "deleted" from awareness - unfavorable evidence which might suggest that a prior belief is flawed is to various degrees ignored and willfully avoided.[15]
