The Psychology Of Revenge

The Psychology Of Revenge: Revenge is the urge to make someone suffer for a wrong they did to us; researchers see it as an evolved deterrent that keeps cheaters in check, yet it often feeds rumination, escalates conflict and leaves the avenger feeling worse.

Dominique de Quervain: His 2004 brain scanning study found that punishing a cheater lights up the dorsal striatum, the same reward circuitry that responds to food and money.

Kevin Carlsmith: In his 2008 experiment, people who got to punish a freeloader expected to feel great but actually felt worse than those who couldn't, because they kept dwelling on the offender.

Ultimatum Game: In this classic economics test, people routinely reject lowball offers and walk away with nothing, paying real money just to punish someone who treated them unfairly.

Ernst Fehr: His 2002 research showed people will spend their own money to punish freeloaders even when they'll never meet them again, a behavior called altruistic punishment that may hold cooperation together.

Code of Hammurabi: Its eye for an eye rule sounds brutal, but it actually limited revenge, capping retaliation so personal feuds couldn't spiral into endless bloodshed.

Hatfield and McCoy Feud: America's most famous family feud escalated partly over a disputed hog in 1878 and left about a dozen people dead before it finally burned out.

Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini: This Albanian customary code governs blood feuds so strictly that some families have kept their men locked indoors for years to avoid revenge killings.

Pierre Picaud: A Paris shoemaker wrongly imprisoned by jealous friends who allegedly hunted them down years later, his case from the police archives inspired Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo.

Robert Axelrod: His 1980 computer tournament was won by tit for tat, a strategy that retaliates once against betrayal and then immediately forgives, beating far more vindictive programs.

Michael McCullough: In Beyond Revenge he argues the craving for payback is not a disease but a normal evolved tool, and that forgiveness is equally hardwired and switches on when relationships feel valuable and safe.

Forty-Seven Ronin: These samurai waited nearly two years to avenge their master in 1703, then turned themselves in and were ordered to commit seppuku, becoming Japan's most celebrated revenge story.

Nakam: This group of Jewish Holocaust survivors plotted mass revenge after WWII and in 1946 poisoned bread at a Nuremberg camp for SS prisoners, sickening around 2,000 men.

Corsican Vendetta: Family revenge killings on Corsica were so entrenched in the 19th century that they claimed thousands of lives and gave the world the word vendetta.

Hamlet: Shakespeare's most famous play is a revenge tragedy about a man who can't bring himself to take revenge, and his delay is what makes the story psychologically modern.

Tania Singer: Her 2006 brain study found that when people watched an unfair player get a painful shock, empathy areas quieted down and, in men especially, reward areas lit up.

Brad Bushman: His 2002 experiment showed that venting anger by punching a bag made people more aggressive afterward, debunking the idea that letting it out drains the urge for payback.

Olga of Kiev: After a tribe murdered her husband, the medieval chronicles say she buried their envoys alive and burned their city using birds tied with smoldering cloth.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission: South Africa traded revenge for confession after apartheid, offering amnesty to perpetrators who fully disclosed their crimes in public hearings.

Everett Worthington: The psychologist who built the REACH model of forgiveness was forced to test it on himself after his own mother was murdered in a home burglary.

United Breaks Guitars: After the airline wouldn't pay for his smashed guitar, musician Dave Carroll got revenge with a 2009 song that racked up millions of views and became a customer service case study.

Richard Nisbett: His culture of honor research found that insulted men raised in the American South showed bigger spikes in cortisol and testosterone than Northerners and were readier to retaliate.

Katrin Riedl: Her 2012 study found chimpanzees will punish a thief who steals their food but not one who steals from another chimp, suggesting third party revenge may be uniquely human.

Captain Ahab: Melville's obsessed whaler destroys his ship and crew chasing Moby Dick, literature's great warning that revenge can consume the avenger more completely than the target.

Medea: In Euripides' tragedy she kills her own children to punish her unfaithful husband Jason, the ultimate example of revenge that wounds the avenger as deeply as the enemy.