(I’m playing the devil’s advocate here, trying to answer everything with generic answers and seeing if they’re sufficiently powerful.)
Perhaps for the same reason you can get a tune stuck in your head, repeating and reinforcing itself. (For many people, including myself, the affect of “thinking a thought” is auditory—I hear myself say the thoughts I think.) Many kinds of thoughts, mental “tics”, etc. may have this repetitive self-reinforcing pattern—not just self-hating ones. We may be seeing a natural selection effect where the most self-reinforcing thoughts last the longest—all due simply to the fact that thoughts can be self-reinforcing.
How are thoughts self-reinforcing? Thinking them (which we may process similarly to hearing someone else say them) creates emotions, and in some cases these emotions increase the chance of similar thoughts recurring, creating a positive feedback loop. For example, being praised or thinking self-praising thoughts makes you happier, while thinking self-hating (or other-hating) thoughts makes you sadder or angrier (with yourself).
This might be a contributing element in self-reinforcing feelings of malice, but I would expect that if you actually act on those feelings of malice (towards someone else), the results of the actual acts would swamp any such effects.
(I’m playing the devil’s advocate here, trying to answer everything with generic answers and seeing if they’re sufficiently powerful.)
Perhaps for the same reason you can get a tune stuck in your head, repeating and reinforcing itself. (For many people, including myself, the affect of “thinking a thought” is auditory—I hear myself say the thoughts I think.) Many kinds of thoughts, mental “tics”, etc. may have this repetitive self-reinforcing pattern—not just self-hating ones. We may be seeing a natural selection effect where the most self-reinforcing thoughts last the longest—all due simply to the fact that thoughts can be self-reinforcing.
How are thoughts self-reinforcing? Thinking them (which we may process similarly to hearing someone else say them) creates emotions, and in some cases these emotions increase the chance of similar thoughts recurring, creating a positive feedback loop. For example, being praised or thinking self-praising thoughts makes you happier, while thinking self-hating (or other-hating) thoughts makes you sadder or angrier (with yourself).
This might be a contributing element in self-reinforcing feelings of malice, but I would expect that if you actually act on those feelings of malice (towards someone else), the results of the actual acts would swamp any such effects.
Does this sound possible?
I don’t think I’m apt to amplify other sorts of thoughts, though I may repeat them.