Revenge is sweet, and a dish best served cold.
Wait a second, is revenge ice cream?
Hello revengers, Jules here for DNews.
We’ve all been there: a co-worker eats your lunch out of the fridge, someone cuts you
off in traffic, a six fingered swordsman kills your father, and you dedicate your life to
the pursuit of vengeance.
But why do we have this impulse?
Why do we seek revenge?
Maybe it’s obvious: revenge is retribution, it is an equal and opposite reaction, and
so it balances things and “feels good”.
Or at least it’s supposed to.
But research has shown that revenge doesn’t actually make us feel how we expect.
In 2004 Swiss researchers scanned the brains of people contemplating revenge on a teammate
who had wronged them in a game.
They found the caudate nucleus, an area associated with reward, was active while the participant
mulled over how best to get back at their cheating partner.
But while it feels good to have that part of your brain stimulated, actually acting
on those musings turns out to be a dead end.
A 2008 study led by Kevin Carlsmith of Colgate university asked participants to play a game.
A group of people had the option to put a dollar in a pool or keep the money for themselves.
Whatever money went into the pool would be increased by 40% and redistributed.
Unbeknownst to the participants, one person was planted to withhold their dollar and get
a free ride.
After the game, participants were given the option of punishing the freeloader, and were
then surveyed about how they felt immediately after and again 10 minutes later.
Surprisingly, people who chose retribution reported they were still angry, even after
10 minutes when most others had moved on.
They had delivered justice but they just couldn’t get over the original transgression.
Justice doesn’t simply cancel out the original wrong.
But another study from this year muddies the waters a bit.
Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis set out to distinguish moods from
emotions, claiming Carlsmith’s study focused more on moods which are lower intensity and
longer lasting.
Researchers compared how Americans felt after reading about something benign like food allergies
versus how they felt after reading about the death of Osama Bin Laden.
They concluded that revenge puts people in a bad mood because they dwell on the original
act, much like Carlsmith’s findings.
But revenge also does make people feel good, at least for a little while.
It’s a mixed bag.
Temporary satisfaction for a trade off of long-term dwelling.
So if the arc of revenge is long and bends toward dissatisfaction, why do we still do
it?
There are a few different takes.
Maybe vengeance is a holdover from when we were simple herds of humans without a justice
system.
If caveman Ook wants to steal caveman Grog’s coconuts but fears Grog will bash his coconut
in, then Ook stays in line, Grog keeps his coconuts, and society keeps on truckin’.
Another angle is that we need revenge to be a tool to teach lessons.
One experiment by Mario Gollwitzer had people play a game with a partner.
I think you see where this is going.
When their partner who was a secret plant inevitably tried to cheat them, the participants
could take revenge AND send a message.
Their partner would then either send back an indignant response, an apologetic one,
or no response at all.
Only when they received acknowledgement of wrongdoing did the avengers feel any better.
Otherwise they walked away feeling worse than if they had done nothing at all.
When you consider that people who have been retaliated against rarely feel it was warranted
or fair, you can see how this can become an endless cycle where all parties feel wronged
and no one is satisfied.
In the end, it looks like the best revenge is to do nothing at all.
If you want to end the vicious cycle and quell those vengeful urges, it helps to be emotionally
intelligent.
Laci explains exactly what that is here.
Have you ever pulled off the perfect revenge?
How did you feel afterwards, or how do you feel thinking about it right now?
Tell us down in the comments section!
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