After having the opportunity to get revenge, the rejected individuals scored the same on mood tests as those who had not been rejected. "It's about the experience of regulating emotions," says Chester. Not only can revenge give people pleasure, but people seek it precisely because of the anticipation it will do so. Taking these results together the team came to a startling conclusion. The placebo group, it seems, did not seek revenge because they believed they would feel no pleasure from doing so. Still, the placebo effect was so strong that the participants who took the "drug" didn't bother to retaliate against the people who rejected them – whereas those that were not given the placebo acted far more aggressively. Lastly, to understand the role of emotion in the desire to seek revenge, Chester and DeWall gave participants what they believed was a mood-inhibiting drug (it was in fact only a harmless vitamin tablet).
Again, those that felt most rejected subjected their rivals to longer noise blasts. In the lab version, rather than a voodoo doll, participants acted out their "revenge" by blasting a prolonged, unpleasantly loud noise to their opponents (who were computers, not real people, which the participants were not aware of). This rejection test was first done remotely online and later replicated with different participants brought into the lab. Those in the rejected camp stabbed their doll with significantly more pins. All participants were then allowed to put pins in a virtual voodoo doll.
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To understand this further, Chester and DeWall set up a series of experiments, published in the March 2017 journal of Personality and Social Psychology, where the participants were made to feel rejected by being purposely left out of a computerised ball tossing game. The "father of psychology" Sigmund Freud was well aware that it could feel cathartic to behave aggressively, but the idea that revenge provides its own special form of pleasure has only become apparent recently. The link between aggression and pleasure itself is not new. "So by the nature of trying to understand aggression I started studying revenge." "I was curious, how do you take something like an insult and how do you go from that to an aggressive response." The key, he believes, lies in the desire to retaliate. He refers to the emotions involved as the "psychological middlemen" – the thoughts and feelings that come between a provocation and an aggressive outcome. David Chester of Virginia Commonwealth University was initially studying aggression but quickly realised that there is often a lot more going on before a violent interaction. It is not easy to untangle from violent behaviour, making it a difficult topic to study. While the topic of aggression is well-studied – its triggers include alcohol, being insulted and narcissistic personality traits – revenge is lesser understood. The same sentiment is echoed by many other outlets. Donald Trump's presidential victory, for instance, came as a result of "revenge of working-class whites… who felt abandoned by a rapidly globalising economy," according to an article in the Washington Post. It drives crime – up to 20% of homicides and 60% of school shootings are linked to revenge, studies show.
But what motivates us to seek revenge in the first place? Researchers are gradually getting some answers, and they are finding that revenge has some unexpected upsides. In the moment, it can certainly feel cathartic to do so. Many of us have no doubt imagined vengeance against those who have wronged us, or even lashed out at them. Literature has used it throughout history, from Greek tragedies such as Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy – where Orestes wants to murder his mother to avenge his father – to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Revenge has been part of human behaviour for almost as long as we have existed on Earth. When Achilles' best friend and cousin Patroklus is killed, he too seeks a reckless and bloody revenge. The theme of revenge spirals through the entire narrative. He brings an entire army to Troy, waging a lengthy war that kills thousands. When Paris steals away Helen, her husband King Menelaus cannot bear the injustice and seeks to attack her seducer. Take the sack of Troy, as depicted in Homer's epic poem The Iliad.
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