![]() They also said it had “allowed for new experiences”. The participants wrote that they had “grown stronger”, “discovered unknown strengths”, and had “become wiser” thanks to the experience. One study explicitly instructed participants to write about hurtful events, focusing on the personal benefits like how it changed them for the better, to see if that could help them let go of their need for revenge. So, what should you do instead of taking revenge when you are wronged? Just bottle things up? This can sometimes be very hard, as we all know. This makes it hard to work out whether there are any longer-term psychological benefits. How you feel about the personality of the perpetrator and whether they can repair their behaviour without you having to exact revenge also matters, as does whether they have the capacity for change and apologise in a meaningful way.Įven time itself can affect how the revenge feels. ![]() The longer-term effect depends on so many other factors – including how your feelings change about the original act and whether you can now empathise with the perpetrator and understand it from their point of view. But whilst planning the revenge may feel wonderful, afterwards it may be a different story. Revenge seems so appealing and so rewarding, making the brain’s reward centres positively glow. This in many senses is the dilemma of revenge. This means that revenge actually has the capacity to trigger both positive and negative emotions (including feeling tense, uncertain and having a sense of dread). Revenge is not always sweet, rather “revenge is bittersweet” (hardly as punchy a phrase admittedly). Their conclusion was that participants reported a mix of emotions. In addition to probing the mood state of participants after they contemplated an act of revenge, the researchers also included a computational analysis of the language the participants used while writing about their thoughts and feelings about the event, and a more detailed analysis of their overall emotional responses rather than just transient mood. In a 2008 study, researchers found that people often reported far more negative mood immediately after engaging in an act of revenge.Īnother study introduced a wider range of measures to assess these psychological effects. This isn’t necessarily the case after an act of revenge, however. But the fact that it can make you feel so good while you anticipate the effects should not be neglected. Some argue that revenge is mainly about punishing transgression and maintaining the social order. Smiling about thoughts of revenge? NEIL HALL/EPA If A failed to trust B and didn’t transfer any money in the first place they both ended up with 10 units. But if B violated A’s trust and sent back nothing, B ended up with all 50 units. If B acted in a trustworthy manner and sent back half the money, they both ended up with 25 units – a big profit on the ten they had each started out with. Person B could now send back half of this (25 units) to A or send nothing at all. If he transferred the money, the experimenter quadrupled the amount that person B received to 40 units, so B then had 50 units. Person A made the first decision, he could either transfer his ten units to person B or keep them for himself. Each started the game with ten money units. The game went as follows: two male players interacted anonymously with each other, person A and person B. In a 2004 study published in Science, researchers scanned participants’ brains using positron emission tomography (PET) while they played an economic game which centred on trust, and sometimes led to vengeful actions. They say that revenge is sweet, and there is evidence from neuroscience that they are right. But is it ultimately a good idea – will it make us wiser and happier in the long term? Most of us have dreamt about revenge at some point in our lives, and perhaps even achieved it. His former adviser Dominic Cummings, who was sacked by Johnson in 2020, has been accused of being the mastermind behind a number of carefully orchestrated leaks about the gatherings – amounting to a pretty spectacular case of revenge. The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, is fighting to stay in power after it emerged that he attended several parties during the country’s strict lockdowns in 20.
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