Make no mistake, revenge is (bitter)sweet,study confirms29 June 2016, by Gerry Everding

Study participants rated the intensity of moods andemotions triggered by their reading of brief newsaccounts, including one that described the killing ofOsama bin Laden by U.S. forces as a retaliation for the9/11 terrorist attacks. In a second experiment, theOsama bin Laden passage was altered to removewording that explicitly described the killing as retaliationfor the 9/11 attacks. Credit: Washington University in St.Louis

Deep, dark and sometimes overwhelming, thehuman compulsion to seek revenge is a complexemotion that science has found incredibly hard toexplain.

Despite popular consensus that "revenge issweet," years of experimental research havesuggested otherwise, finding that revenge isseldom as satisfying as we anticipate and oftenleaves the avenger less happy in the long run.

Now, new research from Washington University inSt. Louis is adding a twist to the science ofrevenge, showing that our love-hate relationshipwith this dark desire is indeed a mixed bag, makingus feel both good and bad, for reasons we mightnot expect.

"We show that people express both positive andnegative feelings about revenge, such that revengeisn't bitter, nor sweet, but both," said the study'sfirst author, Fade Eadeh, a doctoral student inpsychological and brain sciences in Arts &Sciences. "We love revenge because we punishthe offending party and dislike it because it remindsus of their original act."

Forthcoming in the Journal of Experimental SocialPsychology, the study provides a more nuancedunderstanding of both the benefits and drawbacksof revenge. Conducted with colleagues in theuniversity's Attitude and Social CognitionLaboratory, the study is co-authored by lab directorand associate professor Alan Lambert and fellowgraduate student Stephanie Peak.

Its findings are based on three experiments inwhich about 200 people in each experiment wereasked to fill out online questionnaires rating theintensity of moods and emotions triggered by theirreading of brief news accounts, including one thatdescribed the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S.forces as a retaliation for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The experiments were designed to explore whetherpeople are right in thinking that revenge has thepotential to make them feel good, despite recentresearch that suggests otherwise.

"We wondered whether people's intuitions aboutrevenge are actually more accurate than originallyanticipated," Eadeh said. "Why is there such acommon cultural expectation that revenge feelssweet and satisfying? If revenge makes us feelworse, why did we see so many people cheering inthe streets of D.C. and New York after theannouncement of bin Laden's death?"

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Crowds outside the White House celebrate the killing ofOsama bin Laden by U.S. forces in retaliation for the 9/11terror attacks on the United States. Credit: WikipediaCommons

In experiment one, participants read either a"justice-is-served" news account of bin Laden'skilling or a nonpolitical control passage about theOlympic Games. They then rated how strongly theircurrent feelings matched up with a random list of 25adjectives, such as happy, edgy, satisfied, irritated,mad, upset or sad.

Although this framework is similar to one used in a2014 revenge study by Lambert, researchersmodified the data analysis phase to focus onmeasures of emotion, as opposed to mood.Lambert's study and a 2008 revenge study led bythe late Kevin Carlsmith at Colgate University bothfocused on mood and both found little evidence thatrevenge contributed positively toward it.

Psychologists sometimes use the terms emotionand mood interchangeably, but there are importantdifferences, as evident in the current paper.Emotions usually relate back to some clear andspecific trigger and can be intense but are oftenfleeting. Moods, on the other hand, may comeabout gradually, last for an extended time, and areoften of low intensity.

In this study, Eadeh and colleagues usedsophisticated linguistic tools along with a standardmood inventory to tease apart the differences inself-reported emotions after reading a revenge-

related passage. This analysis replicated previousfindings that showed reading about revenge putpeople in a worse mood, but it also found that thesame experience was capable of generatingpositive feelings.

"Our paper consistently shows that the emotionalconsequences of revenge are a mixed bag, in thatwe feel both good and bad when we take revengeon another party. This counters some previousresearch on the topic, by our own lab and others,that revenge is a wholly negative experience,"Eadeh said.

To further test these findings, researchers repeatedthe experiment using different reading passagesselected to avoid wording or content that mightpredispose readers toward a particular emotion ormood. To avoid stimulating patriotic emotions, forexample, the Olympics control passage wasswapped for a generic description of food allergies.The Osama bin Laden passage was altered toremove wording that explicitly described the killingas retaliation for the 9/11 attacks.

Despite these changes, the findings remainedlargely the same.

"We believe the reason people might feel goodabout revenge is because it allows us theopportunity to right a wrong and carry out the goalof punishing a bad guy," Eadeh said. "In our study,we found that Americans often expressed a greatdeal of satisfaction from bin Laden's death,presumably because we had ended the life of aperson that was the mastermind behind a terrororganization."

More information: Fade R. Eadeh et al. Thebittersweet taste of revenge: On the negative andpositive consequences of retaliation, Journal ofExperimental Social Psychology (2016). DOI:10.1016/j.jesp.2016.04.007

Provided by Washington University in St. Louis

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APA citation: Make no mistake, revenge is (bitter)sweet, study confirms (2016, June 29) retrieved 28July 2018 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-06-revenge-bittersweet.html

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