I venture to assert, with absolutely no evidence necessary, that revenge is older than the Old Testament! It’s both ancient and contemporary. (Think Homer, Hamlet, and Pres. Trump’s campaign slogan, “I am your revenge.”)

Brian Knutson published research in Science in 2004, showing that when people are wronged in a laboratory game and then given a chance to retaliate, the part of the brain activated is an area known to process rewards. (In even earlier work, researchers found that this part of the brain was active during cocaine and nicotine use). Just thinking about revenge is pleasurable!

“In the past few years, psychological scientists have discovered many ways in which the practice of revenge fails to fulfill its sweet expectations. Behavioral scientists have observed that instead of quenching hostility, revenge can prolong the unpleasantness of the original offense and that merely bringing harm upon an offender is not enough to satisfy a person’s vengeful spirit. They have also found that instead of delivering justice, revenge often creates only a cycle of retaliation…”

Eric Jaffe, The Complicated Psychology of Revenge
Association for Psychological Science

Why We Seek Revenge

A belief in justice is the primary driver when seeking revenge, according to Fade Eadeh, an assistant professor of psychology at Seattle University. If the world was just and fair, bad things would happen to bad people and good things to good people. As a “good person,” you may feel compelled to even the score with a “bad person” to restore justice. However, such retaliation seldom brings balance or justice.

Carlsmith et al. in a 2008 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, reported that although people believe revenge will make them feel better and provide closure, in fact those who delivered punishment continued to think about what they had done and felt worse than those who had no opportunity to avenge a wrong. Guilt, shame, and embarrassment may tamp down any pleasure derived from vengeance,

More recently, Allie Volpe (Vox, 2024) observed that even chimpanzees and elephants have shown vengeful tendencies. Revenge, to deter offenders (and would-be offenders) from future harmful behavior is a response to wrongdoing that anthropologists have observed in practically every culture.

For revenge to have the best chance of eliciting a positive outcome, the punished party needs to know what she/he/they did that harmed another. “When [revenge] goes right, it triggers remorse and guilt, and a need for the other person to fix things,” asserts Stephen Yoshimura , a professor of communication studies at the University of Montana. “But a lot of times, because things don’t get explained or there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what exactly is the situation … they just respond with counter-retaliation. That’s where things start to get out of hand.”

A Dish Best Not Served At All

As a supervisor, parent, and spouse, I’ve long been an advocate of simply telling a person, “When you do X, I feel Y.” Among others, Dr. David Chester, Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, also suggests finding non-harmful ways to communicate how someone mistreated you.

“While interpersonal revenge can be functional, in contemporary societies it can trigger a cycle of potentially violent (not to mention potentially illegal) acts. But suppressing thoughts of revenge may cause them to rebound. So what to do? At the risk of perpetuating an overwrought cliche, the best revenge, experts say, is a life well-lived.” (Volpe)

The June 5 edition of The Wall Street Journal, has an excellent review of this topic, written by James Kimmel, Jr., a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. The title of his article pretty much says it all: “This Is Your Brain on Revenge: The neuroscience of vengeance shows that it can be as addictive as drugs and forgiveness works like detox.” He concludes that “Neuroscience supports the ancient forgiveness teachings of Jesus and the Buddha,” and maintains that we can heal an entire nation addicted to revenge by following modern science and ancient teachings about forgiveness. “We need to Make America Forgiving Again.” You can read all about it in his new book The Science of Revenge: Understanding the World’s Deadliest Addiction—and How to Overcome It.

Bottom Line: The evolutionary nature of revenge may make it “human nature,” but in this instance, what’s natural is bad for you.