Hate can be raw and destructive and, some say, is the only thing stronger than lover’s love, although that’s quite a bleak take on things.Robert Sternberg, a professor of human development at Cornell University and author of the Psychology of Hatred, has spent a portion of his career analysing this complex emotion and has distilled it down to three basic components, which form the triangular theory of hatred.For Sternberg, the main elements are repulsion, passion and contempt. Different combinations of these three components give rise to different forms of hatred – cold and calculating, simmering loathing, need for total annihilation.When psychologists surveyed nearly 600 people, they found that we mostly hate people that we know and most often because they’ve betrayed us in some way.Extreme aversion to others’ personality can also be a factor. Ex-husbands are among the most common objects of hatred, along with colleagues and other family members. Over a lifetime, people reported they hated about five people on average.