The Revenge That Feels Best Is Actually No Revenge at All

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What does revenge have in common with the best kind of chocolate? They’re both bittersweet.

We all have elaborate revenge fantasies from time to time, and theoretically, it would be really satisfying to get back at people who hurt us. But research on revenge has been somewhat mixed in its findings. Some studies have found that it does feel really nice to finally get one over on someone who deserves it. But others have supposed that in order to take revenge, we must be reminded of what happened to us to motivate that revenge in the first place, and the rumination on that experience required to pursue revenge is in itself a negative feeling.

To complicate the issue, most studies on revenge have also looked at retrospective accounts of how it felt when participants enacted revenge sometime in the past, and importantly, how remembered revenge might feel different than revenge in real time.

A study that further explores revenge

In order to figure out the dirty details on revenge, a recent study in Social Psychological and Personality Science created a real-time laboratory situation in which 66 participants had the opportunity to punish others who beat them in a computer game based on reaction time. In the game, participants were paired with two fictional partners, who occasionally “played” in a way that penalized the participant. In reality, whether the participant or one of the fake partners won the round was randomly determined by the computer program.

Source: Pexels / Atul Choudhary

After each round, participants then were asked to select a player who would receive a two-second blast of white noise, which was set at a volume that was just above participants’ own threshold for what they considered to be very unpleasant. Their choices for who to punish were the partner who won that round, the partner who lost that round, or no one.

In some rounds, participants were asked to select whether to blast the provoking partner, the non-provoking partner, or no one by pressing a space bar when the icon for each option was highlighted green on the screen. After these rounds, participants were classified as “high revenge-seeking” or “low revenge-seeking” based on how often they decided to retaliate against the winner.

However, in some of the rounds, the ability to select who received the noise punishment was just an illusion, and the computer made a random selection. In these trials, because the green highlight moved so quickly from icon to icon (about half a second), participants merely felt that they could not always press the space bar for the person they wanted before it had jumped to the next. This means that sometimes participants were able to punish (or not punish) who they wanted, and other times, the outcome might have been contrary to their wishes.

After each round of the game, the researchers measured participants’ emotional reaction as “pleasant” or “unpleasant.”

As we might hope, the lowest degree of pleasant emotion in both the low revenge-seekers and high revenge-seekers came from sending an aversive noise blast to innocents. However, despite their label, the high revenge-seekers weren’t just out for blood across the board; they felt significantly worse about punishing non-offenders than did the low revenge-seekers. Both groups felt slightly more positive emotions about punishing a provoking player.

But most interestingly, both the revenge-motivated and their non-vengeful counterparts felt the most pleasant emotions when no one received the noise blast. Even among those who more often chose to retaliate against the winner, it felt better not to retaliate at all.

This study indicates that while revenge can feel good, it may still be tinged with negative feelings. The current study did not examine specifically what might cause the lower levels of pleasant emotions after revenge compared to seeking no revenge at all, but we might speculate. The authors suggest that it might be that revenge also acts as a reminder of a transgression.

It could also simply be against social norms or moral teachings to retaliate against others, which may take away some of the satisfaction we might otherwise derive from our act of vengeance. Of course, the study also examined relationships between strangers, so longer-term relationship dynamics may intensify or complicate the emotional reactions found in this study.

Whether you prefer to serve your revenge piping hot or as an elegant vichyssoise of vengeance, this may be one of those times where it’s most appropriate to go dessert first—and according to this study, doing nothing is the sweeter option.