You are walking to class as per usual. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a classmate sticks out his leg and deliberately trips you. You fall face downwards on the floor and people around you erupt in laughter resulting in you feeling embarrassed. It makes you so mad that throughout the rest of the day you obsess over the incident and play out situations in your head where you would get back at the guy. The next day, you find an opportunity to retaliate and trip this person up in the hallway. Did it make you feel any better? According to a recent study, it is highly likely that it would.
A 2017 study examining the relationship between social rejection and aggression found that the rejected participants’ retaliation was motivated by establishing emotional equilibrium and by the rewarding nature of this aggression. Vengeance does makes you happy. But for how long? While the anticipation of taking revenge by tripping up the person who tripped you might seem enjoyable, the actual act may make you more miserable eventually. The researchers of a study on revenge conducted in 2008 found exactly this. They had previously hypothesized that retaliating against an offender will improve the mood of the participants and bring about psychological closure. However, in the study, when participants who were offered an opportunity to retaliate against someone did so, they reported feeling worse than players who were not offered the opportunity to retaliate. The researchers explained that those who retaliated felt worse because of excessive rumination about the person against whom they had retaliated, which led to negative affect. Another study conducted in 2018 explored the relationship between vengeance, positivity, forgiveness, and happiness, and found revenge to be negatively linked to forgiveness, positivity, and happiness.
So, if the positive effects of revenge are fleeting and do not pay bigger dividends in the long run, then why is it that people are motivated to get even? Swiss researchers have found that revenge is sweet, even if momentarily. Participants in their study were paired up with another participant and made to play an economic exchange game, where they were told that if they trusted and cooperated with each other then they would both earn money. But if one double crossed the other, then the cheater could keep a larger share. The player who had been cheated could retaliate by imposing a fine on the cheater, sometimes at the cost of losing some of his own money to impose the fine. Brain scans of those who retaliated showed increased activity in an area of the brain called the striatum, which is an enjoyment centre. Thus, the motivation behind revenge can be that it is hedonically rewarding. So, in a way, the desire to get back at your perpetrator is much like that of satisfying a food craving.
More often than not, the desire for revenge seems to be about “balancing the scales” or “righting the wrong.” Imagine someone commits an atrocious crime against someone you love. Wouldn’t you want to teach that person a lesson? So, is “serving justice” is what is at the heart of revenge? A study published in 2010 examined two hypotheses with regard to the same. The first one being the comparative hypothesis which states that the victim feels satisfied if the wrong-doer suffers as much pain as he/she had inflicted upon the victim, regardless of whether the victim is responsible for it or it is because of fate. For instance, seeing the person who tripped you up in the hallway have his pants rip during a presentation would be satisfying even if you are not responsible for it. The second hypothesis is the understanding hypothesis which suggests that the satisfaction of the avenger depends on whether the wrong-doer knows that they did something very wrong and therefore deserved to be punished. When the researchers tested these hypotheses, they found more support for the latter one. Basically, it means that revenge can be satisfactory only when the offender understands why this revenge was imposed upon him and looks at it as punishment for his prior behaviour.
So to conclude, is revenge good or bad? Some researchers have found that getting even can make people feel worse. But at the same time, research with respect to fairness suggests that when wrong-doers are punished for their misdeeds, it should give rise to satisfaction. A study conducted in 2017 by Fade Eadeh, a doctoral candidate at Washington University in St. Louis concluded that revenge is actually bittersweet. She stated that “we love revenge because we punish the offending party and dislike it because it reminds us of their original act.”
Even though researchers have found both favourable and unfavourable aspects of revenge, a comparative analysis of the costs and benefits of taking revenge might reveal that the disadvantages of taking revenge frequently overshadow the benefits. Rather than automatically responding by lashing out against the perpetrator, it would probably be more fruitful to consider other methods of coping with victimization. A 2007 study found that rumination associated with vengeance leads to production of higher levels of cortisol (stress hormone), which ultimately leads to anxiety, depression, memory, and concentration problems. Also, revenge might often motivate counter-revenge. For example, you might think that getting back at the person who wronged you is well-deserved and justified; however, the recipient of your revenge might consider this as excessive and may try to restore equity by seeking revenge from you, thus resulting in the both of you getting caught in an endless revenge loop. So, as great as it sounds to destroy your philandering partner’s new car or getting back at a colleague who stole your ideas at work by giving their phone number to every telemarketing firm in the country, it would probably be a much better idea to instead take a backseat and let karma do its job.
Kimaya Khanolkar
