Turning from constructive communication to destructive communication, hostility
seeks to destroy the other. Hostile people use verbal and nonverbal
messages to express irritability, negativity, resentment, and suspicion.
They tend to have a quick temper, little patience, are moody, and
become exasperated quickly. They have a tendency toward pessimism about
outcomes that others find more favorable, refuse to cooperate, and be
antagonistic toward authority, rules, and social conventions.
Expressions of jealousy and hatred are common resentments, and they
often sulk about real or imagined slights, which causes anger to
escalate. They are distrustful of others and believe that others want to
harm them, reflecting underlying suspiciousness.
Hostility has been explained as "an attitude, a dislike of a particular person, object, or
issue, accompanied by a desire to see this target injured or even
destroyed." People demonstrating predispositions to hostility are often
classified as having hostile personalities. These people tend to exhibit
common themes: They perceive themselves as victims of persecution from
others (everyone's mean to me), view their world as a mean one (people
like to do things just to upset me), view themselves as more aggressive
than others (you don't want to mess with me).
Some research suggests
that hostility is a facet of neuroticism, and other research argues that
aggressive behavior is learned from aggressive people responding
aggressively to aggressive situations. More specifically, frustrating
and anger-inducing experiences can create hostility and aggression. In
this way, hostility is learned and can become habitual, and can be
created and greatly influenced by how a person was disciplined in
childhood. This trait emerges particularly when one person is attempting
to influence another.
Research shows that a predisposition toward
hostility and aggressiveness can persist over time and is quite stable,
and that young hostile communicators will very likely remain hostile
communicators for much, if not all, of their lifetimes.