We may be hard wired to be prejudiced and ethnocentric

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Oxytocin ... is linked with all kinds of feel-good emotions in people such as trust, empathy and generosity ... Researchers have discovered it also can promote ethnocentrism, potentially fueling xenophobia, prejudice and violence.

Past studies have shown that oxytocin fosters social feelings—between mates, for example, or mother and child ... Social feelings, however, are not always positive ones ... For instance, ethnocentric people view their own group as better than others—they feel closer to their compatriots, but potentially at the expense of outsiders.

In five experiments 280 male Dutch volunteers first inhaled a spray containing either oxytocin or a placebo. In the first two experiments participants hit one button if they saw a positive word such as "wonderful" or the name of a fellow Dutchman on the computer, such as Maarten; they pushed another key if they saw a negative word such as "awful" or a foreign name. These groupings were then reversed—the volunteers pushed one button if they saw a positive word or a foreign name, and the other if they saw a negative word or a domestic name.

Arab names such as Ahmed were used in the first experiment and German ones such as Helmut in the second. The researchers found that in both cases, volunteers given oxytocin were faster at linking fellow Dutchmen with positive words. There was also significant evidence that Arabs were more often linked with negative words, and weaker signs that Germans were.

In a third experiment the scientists investigated the extent to which volunteers ascribed uniquely human emotions such as admiration or contempt to fellow countrymen or foreigners as opposed to more basic ones such as exhaustion and pleasure. Participants given oxytocin were significantly more likely to associate more human emotions with Netherlanders than with Arabs, although they were equally likely to associate positive and negative emotions to either group.

In the last experiments volunteers were given the option to save the lives of five nameless people by sacrificing one other person. These lone individuals either had typical Dutch male names, or foreign ones—Arab names in the fourth experiment and German ones in the fifth. Participants given oxytocin sacrificed foreigners more often than fellow Dutchmen. This isn't because they mercilessly sacrificed more outsiders than volunteers given placebo did—rather, they protectively sacrificed fewer fellow Dutchmen.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-love-hate-relationship

[TBoneTX 45,537]

But what if one hates all people, animals, and things?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

But what if one hates all people, animals, and things?

You mean a Nihilist?