Revenge isn’t sweet

Several weeks back I spotted this interesting article by Jesse Bering, director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland. In it he details experimental evidence that despite assumptions to the contrary, exacting revenge upon someone who has cheated you makes you less happy, not more.

In our minds we may imagine that revenge will feel sweet (this is known as “affective forecasting,” in which we make assumptions about how we will feel under a given circumstance) but actually it’s forgiveness that’s sweet.

…as a “punisher,” you would have been given the opportunity to levy a punitive fine against the cheater at the end of the game, thus “teaching her a lesson.” Or, as a “witness,” you would simply observe as one of the other players imposed the fine. Alternatively, you could have found yourself in the control condition in which the cheater was never punished.

The most important finding was that, contrary to what the non-punishing participants thought the punishers would feel (basically, that levying the fine against her would provide an unrivaled degree of pleasure and satisfyingly resolve the matter), the punishers in fact reported feeling the worst out of the bunch once they’d gotten even. That is to say, the non-punishers’ “affective forecasts” for the positive afterglow of retaliation were way off the mark.

Furthermore, the punishers were still thinking about the cheater ten minutes later whereas those from the other conditions had moved on from this otherwise trivial social betrayal.

I always enjoy seeing experimental confirmation of ancient truths, as in these verses from the Dhammapada:

“He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me.” Those who harbor such thoughts do not still their hatred.

“He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me.” Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred.

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