The most common form of that is revenge," Chester said. Materials provided by Virginia Commonwealth University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Science News. Journal Reference : David Chester, C.
Nathan DeWall. Aggressive Behavior , [ abstract ]. ScienceDaily, 30 November Virginia Commonwealth University. What leads certain people to seek vengeance? Retrieved November 14, from www. But even though they don't enjoy the forgiveness stories as They observed which areas were This is true especially of people suffering from complex regional pain syndrome CRPS , a disabling chronic pain ScienceDaily shares links with sites in the TrendMD network and earns revenue from third-party advertisers, where indicated.
Print Email Share. Boy or Girl? Revenge has been part of human behaviour for almost as long as we have existed on Earth. Many of us have no doubt imagined vengeance against those who have wronged us, or even lashed out at them. In the moment, it can certainly feel cathartic to do so. But what motivates us to seek revenge in the first place? Researchers are gradually getting some answers, and they are finding that revenge has some unexpected upsides. Revenge is a powerful emotional trigger that mobilises people into action.
Hamlet's quest is motivated by revenge, like so many stories throughout history Credit: Getty Images. And it shapes politics too. Donald Trump's presidential victory, for instance, came as a result of "revenge of working-class whites… who felt abandoned by a rapidly globalising economy," according to an article in the Washington Post.
The same sentiment is echoed by many other outlets. While the topic of aggression is well-studied — its triggers include alcohol , being insulted and narcissistic personality traits — revenge is lesser understood. It is not easy to untangle from violent behaviour, making it a difficult topic to study. David Chester of Virginia Commonwealth University was initially studying aggression but quickly realised that there is often a lot more going on before a violent interaction.
He refers to the emotions involved as the "psychological middlemen" — the thoughts and feelings that come between a provocation and an aggressive outcome.
He set out to uncover more about what causes it. First he, along with his colleague Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky, discovered that a person who is insulted or socially rejected feels an emotional pain. The area in the brain associated with pain was most active in participants who went on to react with an aggressive response after feeling rejected.
In a follow-up study he was surprised to find that emotional pain was intricately yoked with pleasure. That is, while rejection initially feels painful, it can quickly be masked by pleasure when presented with the opportunity to get revenge — it even activates the brain's known reward circuit, the nucleus accumbens.
People who are provoked behave aggressively precisely because it can be "hedonically rewarding", Chester found. Revenge it seems really can be sweet. Richard Nixon was well-known for his list of foes Credit: Getty Images. The link between aggression and pleasure itself is not new.
The "father of psychology" Sigmund Freud was well aware that it could feel cathartic to behave aggressively, but the idea that revenge provides its own special form of pleasure has only become apparent recently. To understand this further, Chester and DeWall set up a series of experiments , published in the March journal of Personality and Social Psychology, where the participants were made to feel rejected by being purposely left out of a computerised ball tossing game.
All participants were then allowed to put pins in a virtual voodoo doll. Those in the rejected camp stabbed their doll with significantly more pins. This rejection test was first done remotely online and later replicated with different participants brought into the lab. In the lab version, rather than a voodoo doll, participants acted out their "revenge" by blasting a prolonged, unpleasantly loud noise to their opponents who were computers, not real people, which the participants were not aware of.
Again, those that felt most rejected subjected their rivals to longer noise blasts. Lastly, to understand the role of emotion in the desire to seek revenge, Chester and DeWall gave participants what they believed was a mood-inhibiting drug it was in fact only a harmless vitamin tablet. Still, the placebo effect was so strong that the participants who took the "drug" didn't bother to retaliate against the people who rejected them — whereas those that were not given the placebo acted far more aggressively.
The placebo group, it seems, did not seek revenge because they believed they would feel no pleasure from doing so. Taking these results together the team came to a startling conclusion.
Not only can revenge give people pleasure, but people seek it precisely because of the anticipation it will do so. And it worked. After having the opportunity to get revenge, the rejected individuals scored the same on mood tests as those who had not been rejected. This finding, however, does need to be taken with a necessary pinch of salt. There are currently no long-term follow up studies on how revenge feels days or weeks after the act.
Preliminary — as yet unpublished results — show that revenge-seekers only get a momentary feeling of pleasure, Chester found.
That begins a cycle and it starts to look like an addiction… then afterwards you feel worse than when you started," he explains. And that might help explain why those who seek the high of revenge fail to anticipate disastrous personal consequences. The footballer Zinedine Zidane, for instance, will forever be remembered for head-butting Marco Matterazzi in the World Cup.
Along a similar vein, Richard Nixon is well-known for his list of foes, the goal being to "screw his political enemies". Some of his dirty tricks later led to his forced resignation.
Unfortunately, revenge gives people pleasure Credit: Getty Images. The question then becomes, why has this seemingly destructive behaviour persisted in our evolution if it can cause us so much trouble?
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