Haters Gonna Hate, Indeed, Study Proves

Haters gonna hate, and while we can vow to make our haters be our motivators, it also stands to further exploration — are haters indeed destined to hate on people and things regardless of what you do?

The haters gonna hate rebuttal always feels a bit more like a reassurance. “You did the best you could,” it seems to suggest, “but haters are the problem, not your clothes, dress, attitude, or ability to twerk in front of a national audience.” Right?

As it turns out, the “haters gonna hate” meme is based in a bit of psych truth — and a new study proves it. Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the research indicates that haters walk among us, ambiently hating on our decisions, life choices, and the phat threads we rock all day. And that’s just who they are.

The study itself wasn’t titled “Haters Gonna Hate,” which would instantly make it the coolest and most legit research ever done into haters and their hating ways. Instead, the much more boring header of “Attitudes without Objects: Evidence for a Dispositional Attitude, its Measurement, and its Consequences.”

Which is totally science for this:

The scientists researching haters and their hater tots quizzed subjects on a bunch of random, generally benign subjects, like crossword puzzles, countries, and disciplines like architecture — the sort of things most people don’t form strong opinions regarding.

They found that haters are apt to hate things even if they have no reason to do so, exhibiting a generally negative overall stance on things nearly by default:

“If individuals differ in the general tendency to like versus dislike objects, an intriguing possibility is that attitudes toward independent objects may actually be related. So someone’s attitude toward architecture may in fact tell us something about their attitude toward health care because both attitudes would be biased by a disposition to like or dislike stimuli.”

A disposition to dislike stimuli.

Translation? Haters gonna hate, according to science.