In analogy to the electrophilicity and the potentialphilicity, we de. ne the chargephilicity and chargephobicity to describe the energetic response of a molecule to a change in its charge distribution. The chargephilicity captures the 'best' way to change the underlying charge distribution; the chargephobicity captures the 'worst' way to change the underlying charge distribution. The Coulomb potential induced by the linear-response function plays a very important role in this approach, analogous to the role of the hardness for the electrophilicity, the hardness kernel for the Fukui function, and the linear-response function for the potentialphilicity and potentialphobicity. (c) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.