[1] Thus, the origin of antipathy has been subject to various philosophical and psychological explanations, which some people find convincing and others regard as highly speculative.
Further, the negative feeling sometimes takes place rapidly and without reasoning, functioning below the level of attention, thus resembling an automatic process.
[3] Chester Alexander’s empirical findings suggest that an important characteristic of antipathies is that they are "marginal to reflective consciousness".
Alexander based this conclusion on the fact that many of the subjects of the study reported to have never thought much about their antipathies, have not tried to analyze them or discuss them with others.
Sophie Bryant observed the occurrence of pseudo-antipathy which consists in "the careless and arbitrary interpretation of another person's acts and expressions in accordance with the worst side of one's self".