1. What is ‘revenge?? What kinds of feelings are usually associated
with revenge? Give an example of somebody who might want
to have revenge on someone else.
Answers
Explanation:
The revenge paradox
Ask someone why they seek revenge, though, and they're likely to tell you their goal is catharsis, says Kevin Carlsmith, PhD, a social psychologist at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. But exactly the opposite happens, according to a study he published in the May 2008 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 95, No. 6).
In a series of experiments, he and his colleagues Daniel Gilbert, PhD, at Harvard, and Timothy Wilson, PhD, at the University of Virginia, set up a group investment game with students where if everyone cooperated, everyone would benefit equally. However, if someone refused to invest his or her money, that person would disproportionately benefit at the group's expense.
Carlsmith planted a secret experimenter in each group and had them convince everyone to invest equally. But when it came time to put up the money, the plants defected. The free riders, as Carlsmith calls them, earned an average of $5.59, while the other players earned around $2.51.
Then Carlsmith offered some groups a way to get back at the free rider: They could spend some of their own earnings to financially punish the group's defector.
"Virtually everybody was angry over what happened to them," Carlsmith says, "and everyone given the opportunity [for revenge] took it."
He then gave the students a survey to measure their feelings after the experiment. He also asked the groups who'd been allowed to punish the free rider to predict how they'd feel if they hadn't been allowed to, and he asked the non-punishing groups how they thought they'd feel if they had. In the feelings survey, the punishers reported feeling worse than the non-punishers, but predicted they would have felt even worse had they not been given the opportunity to punish. The non-punishers said they thought they would feel better if they'd had that opportunity for revenge—even though the survey identified them as the happier group. In other words, both groups thought revenge would be sweet, but their own reported feelings agreed more with MLK Jr. than with Exodus.
The results suggest that, despite conventional wisdom, people—at least those with Westernized notions of revenge—are bad at predicting their emotional states following revenge, Carlsmith says. The reason revenge may stoke anger's flames may lie in our ruminations, he says. When we don't get revenge, we're able to trivialize the event, he says. We tell ourselves that because we didn't act on our vengeful feelings, it wasn't a big deal, so it's easier to forget it and move on. But when we do get revenge, we can no longer trivialize the situation. Instead, we think about it. A lot.
"Rather than providing closure, it does the opposite: It keeps the wound open and fresh," he says.
Revenge or justice?
If revenge doesn't make us feel any better, why do we seek it? Carlsmith describes one evolutionary hypothesis, suggested by German psychologists Ernst Fehr, PhD, and Simon G¨echter, PhD.
"Punishing others in this context—what they call 'altruistic punishment'—is a way to keep societies working smoothly," Carlsmith says. "You're willing to sacrifice your well-being in order to punish someone who misbehaved."
And to get people to punish altruistically, they have to be fooled into it. Hence, evolution might have wired our minds to think that revenge will make us feel good.
Another possibility might be that certain groups and societies—such as those in largely lawless Somalia or in areas of the Middle East where tribal rule holds more sway than the national government—are more prone to seek revenge because there's just no other way to obtain justice, says McKee.
"By and large, these types of impulses have arisen and still exist where there's no recourse to law," he says.
That can apply to cultures without a functional legal system, he says, or in groups that operate outside the law, like gangs and the Mafia. "They have to rely on their own retaliatory methods," he says.
Some of these cultures might not even experience the negative emotional backlash Carlsmith found in his study. In her experience, Gelfand says, cultures that place a high value on revenge offer more social support to avengers.
But by looking into what motivates revenge, and by increasing our knowledge about how revenge makes us feel, it might be possible to combine the best aspect of justice and revenge. For example, McKee studies ways that institutional punishment can merge with victim's wishes to participate in that punishment. Victim impact statements, where victims are allowed to describe their ordeal and offer input on an offender's sentencing, have become common in U.S., Australian and Finnish courts. That can partially satisfy a victim's vengeful feelings while also putting the responsibility for punishment on the state, protecting the victim from the rumination trap Carlsmith describes.
"Then victims sort of get the best of both worlds," McKee says.