Killing for revenge?: Research has shown that humans are not the only animals that use revenge as deterrence. But people seem inclined toward long-term planning when it comes to their vengeance, and the U.S. Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden might have just been the final step in that process.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Navy/Christopher Menzie
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Spontaneous patriotic chants and flag-waving crowds were sparked by word that Osama bin Laden had been killed earlier this week. Despite the man's loathed reputation as the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the jubilation over bin Laden's death raises the question: Why the celebration? Was it relief, a sense of justice—or the simple pleasure of revenge?
As draconian as lethal retribution might seem, science has shown that the human brain can take pleasure in certain kinds of revenge. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans have revealed that thinking about revenge activates the reward center—where the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine is lodged—in much the same way that sweet foods or even drugs can.
But the news also brought out some more jumbled sentiments, including sadness for the reminder of the past tragedy and ambivalence about the intentional killing of another person. With all of this gray area—colored in this instance by politics, history and the sheer scale of the international stage—is there a way to understand revenge in a basic, biological way?
To find out, Scientific American spoke with Michael McCullough, a psychology professor and director of the Evolution and Human Behavior Laboratory at the University of Miami, as well as the author of Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct (Jossey-Bass, 2008). He explains that the impulse for revenge evolved as a simple cost-benefit equation and why it is best served cold—but not too cold.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
As a psychologist and someone who has written and thought a lot about this concept, how do you think about revenge?
We want to be very precise in the kinds of behavior that qualify as revenge. We think about behaviors that are generated by psychological mechanisms that were designed for biological functions. Why do I want to make such a niggling distinction? Because there are behaviors that can look like revenge but that aren't. Anytime I impose a harm on you, it might be revenge or it could be something else—I could try to hurt you because I'm trying to get away from you so that you don't harm me in the future, which wouldn't qualify as revenge.
We think there are mechanisms up in the heads of social animals that are designed to deter them from posing harms in the first place. So revenge is the output of mechanisms that are designed for deterrence of harm—behaviors designed to deter individuals from imposing costs on you in the future after that individual has imposed costs on you in the first place.
You'll hear people say things that sound right: it's to "balance the scales," or "right a wrong," or "serve justice," but those don't really meet the level of achieving a function that biology cares about.
So is revenge not about some sort of human desire for justice?
When I don't have my psychologist hat on, and someone has done something to make me feel vengeful, I do feel like I want to teach them a lesson. I think: "I'm going to feel better once I take care of this hangnail of a moral wrong that's on my mind right now." But we want to make a clear distinction between the way revenge feels to us as human critters and what the mechanisms are designed to do.
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17 Comments
Add CommentWell done. it is now scientifically proved that human have evolved as much as birds and fishes in terms of revenge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes this study seperate people who beleive it was a terrorist attack from those who beleive it was a controlled demolition?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot everbody enjoys vengance.
But it might come in handy for evolving past the droopy genes prevalent in todays society.
Maybe we shouldn't use high teck for dipping our toes in the shallow end of the gene pool.
"No diving, please".
What genius exposes its brain to MRI for such a silly purpose?
Frank'n'brain science just doesn't appeal to me. There must be more humane methods.
This, being a 'Christian' country, has me wondering wno is praying for the man's soul? After all, he was only defending his beleifs.
Is there a brain scan for that?
Evolutionary psychology = modern pseudoscience.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can use it to prove literally anything we do has an evolutionary advantage, because 1) We do it, and 2) We're the product of evolution.
There's also a liberal amount of hand-waving involved, too. I wish SciAm wouldn't engage in this form of nonsense.
Did we not learn during the crusades and other wars,that just because we believe something doesn't make it right.Trying to justify recent acts is just as wrong as it was for those that tried to do so in the past.And because of hindsight we should understand that vengeance is always a bad idea.Bin Laden's death was necessary not as an act of vengeance,but as an on going step in the war on terror which is far from over.As long as we have an enemy killing us then we will need to continue to kill them until some kind of settlement is finally reached.I only hope that this war is brought to an end before some really terrible weapon is brought to bear.And a huge loss of life 100's or thousand's of time greater than what's already happened.Depending on how huge the attack is when it comes.It's then that we see whether or not that we turn the other cheek,or respond with a real act of vengeance.With the most likely outcome being the total destruction of Meca.Right now both sides are on thin ice,and if there are not acts of compassion and forgiveness on both sides we may be very well on the path to the end of the world.Or at the very least a world no one still wants to live in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe 'expert' said the tendency for revenge-pleasure was designed... what a falsehood, what a joke. Evolution does not design: it is the opposite of design.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo say the mechanism is designed to make us feel a way is like saying 'the tornado designed the carnage' in terms of intention; to say evolution by natural selection (non-conscious selection) designs things is either lying, telling a falsehood out of ignorance or playing with words... like, how Sam Harris talks about 'spirituality' when he actually means 'feeling far out & enchanted'.
No, we who know what we're talking about do not say every human behavior is explained as having a direct evolutionary advantage. I recommend Steven Pinker lectures on YouTube for insight.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-pleasure of revenge clearly had/has an evolutionary advantage... it isn't up for reasonable debate.
Katherine:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisall the suggestions at the end are defense mechanisms for one who is at the receiving end of the revenge. Its still not clear whether revenge has any viable purpose in evolution a)as gesimsek says are we humans or still fish and birds (so basically we haven't evolved), which means we should fight as kids, b)as shaukaUVM as says, its nonsense to promote revenge. This is like exactly "when did the question change from "why are we at war?" to "who is this man joe wilsons wife".
These are things that should not be promoted scientifically. I bet if you can publish a part of this in CSM (Christian Science Monitor) promoting revenge as more than a cold sort of wrought wound that hurts both the inflictor and the inflictee and several thousands or millions affected by it (for e.g. the wars, there is probably an opinion more than a conspiracy theory that many if not all wars have a revenge motive behind that and we have several examples recently).
Why can't you come up with 2 or 3 ideas or suggestions for people with revenge motive (if you can come up with 5 defense mechanisms for the receiving end of revenge)?
Revenge might be "sweet" but it harms the inflictor way more than sweet things cause diabetes. Its probably way more than a pyrrhic victory and again "when did the question change from why are we at war to who is this man joe wilsons wife"?
Also, isn't it contradictory to the concept of what should have been the case (as David cota here mentions), closure thats all closure, not revenge. Using geronimo (a guy though ludditic yet remembered by more than american tribes and celebrated across the country for his brave fight) doesnt it sort of make laden more heroic and brave than he was (albeit accidentally).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow does it bring closure? If anything its making a seed of a small revenge atop a big revenge.
It should just be a closure thats all.
American joy struck me as shallow and cold. Yes, I understand filth was eliminated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, it must also not only be understood, but shown to be understood in a very real and caring way that our wars and our wars' unintended casualties are truly held by us to be regrettable.
You know now and then some lady or some child who have nothing to do with Bin Laden will be the victim of some misguided attack. While we can place all the blame on Bin Laden, the reality is that innocent people do get hurt or killed in our attempts at "justice".
I guess people just don't love their mother or child the way I loved mine, and I guess people just can't understand the anguish others may have over losing their mother or child in some misguided drone attack.
You fools can celebrate all you want. Alls I will do is say how sorry I am for the casualties that really are tragic and always part of war.
I can not be happy knowing that no matter how necessary our fighting is, that innocent people are unnecessarily killed by it.
You can have your joy. I see unbearable anguish born by those not responsible for the acts that we say justify our violence. Will they be justified in the future taking revenge on the US? Perhaps Bin Laden was justified in his revenge on the US for Western Imperialism and the crusades.
Oh I forgot, Christians are the only true people of God and so you get to kill who you want in good moral standing. Sorry to be so forgetful.
Another possible explanation on why we feel the urge to revenge, is that if you receive an agression, and don't reject or eliminate it, the agressions acts as a penalty for a fault, starts destroying you, and puts you on dependence of the offender. Even more, when God announced He will kill the firsts in the egyptians' offspring, men and beasts, the reason stated was "this way, I'll take revenge from the gods of Egypt". Did you notice that we are bad and God good ?. When criticising revenge, most times people try to protect their own revenges, and discredit or discourage that of others. Where is rule of law ?. Stucious.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@jgrosay said :
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother possible explanation on why we feel the urge to revenge, is that if you receive an agression, and don't reject or eliminate it, the agressions acts as a penalty for a fault, starts destroying you, and puts you on dependence of the offender. Even more, when God announced He will kill the firsts in the egyptians' offspring, men and beasts, the reason stated was "this way, I'll take revenge from the gods of Egypt". Did you notice that we are bad and God good ?. When criticising revenge, most times people try to protect their own revenges, and discredit or discourage that of others. Where is rule of law ?. Stucious.
KEY PHRASE :
"When God announced He will kill the firsts in the egyptians' offspring, men and beasts, the reason stated was "this way, I'll take revenge from the gods of Egypt"
REPLY:
We cannot overemphasize that God’s superlative rightness cannot be undermined by human thinking. Egyptians put faith in useless gods. On the one hand, those impotent images could not do anything and on the other hand, the demons hiding behind those images were deceiving the worshipers of those images, degrading them by causing them to worship non existent things, and finally those demons were too weak to pretend acting for the images.
It is very normal for the living God to clear such nonsense and take revenge when impotent gods are deceitfully made to say they can save like the invisible God.
Moreover, when God brings judgment, three conditions are verified:
1 The rightness of the judgment (here the debased and deceitful worship of impotent idols)
2 The warning has been sounded (in this case by Moses and Aaron)
3 There is a way for the transgressors to escape destruction (in this case but splashing animal blood on the door posts)
Therefore, those Egyptians died of an evitable death.
@jgrosay said :
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother possible explanation on why we feel the urge to revenge, is that if you receive an agression, and don't reject or eliminate it, the agressions acts as a penalty for a fault, starts destroying you, and puts you on dependence of the offender. Even more, when God announced He will kill the firsts in the egyptians' offspring, men and beasts, the reason stated was "this way, I'll take revenge from the gods of Egypt". Did you notice that we are bad and God good ?. When criticising revenge, most times people try to protect their own revenges, and discredit or discourage that of others. Where is rule of law ?. Stucious.
KEY PHRASE :
"When God announced He will kill the firsts in the egyptians' offspring, men and beasts, the reason stated was "this way, I'll take revenge from the gods of Egypt"
REPLY:
We cannot overemphasize that God’s superlative rightness cannot be undermined by human thinking. Egyptians put faith in useless gods. On the one hand, those impotent images could not do anything and on the other hand, the demons hiding behind those images were deceiving the worshipers of those images, degrading them by causing them to worship non existent things, and finally those demons were too weak to pretend acting for the images.
It is very normal for the living God to clear such nonsense and take revenge when impotent gods are deceitfully made to say they can save like the invisible God.
Moreover, when God brings judgment, three conditions are verified:
1 The rightness of the judgment (here the debased and deceitful worship of impotent idols)
2 The warning has been sounded (in this case by Moses and Aaron)
3 There is a way for the transgressors to escape destruction (in this case but splashing animal blood on the door posts)
Therefore, those Egyptians died of an evitable death.
"[T]he reward center—where the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine is lodged".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease get your facts straight. Dopamine is not a "feel-good" neurotransmitter. There have been a bunch of highly cited reviews published in the past 10 years discussing the role of the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system in reward processing. Most of them make mention of the current thinking in the field--namely, that reward is probably processed separately from pleasure.
Rewards drive action. Pleasure just "feels good". It's a subtle distinction, but one worth splitting hairs over.
An stupid reply to Fabrice Loty: you take the burden of the unnecesary task of protecting God from being accused and damned. We all know that the gods of Egypt were devils and it's to be pointed that the symbol of an eye inside a triangle probably refers to Horus, an egyptian god that claimed having lost the other eye in a fight with a devil from which it took the testes. The symbol of the seal of Salomon, also known as the star of David, is considered by some as a solar symbol, like the svastica was a solar symbol -svasti means in sanskrit wellfare or wellbeing-. The cult of Apollo was formerly a solar cult, and the Bible says that Apollo is the same as Abbadon, the exterminator; one must be careful in choosing the corporate image. The seal of Salomon can also be exploded into two triangles, one pointing up, as the masonic triangle with an eye, and the other pointing down, as the rosicrucian symbol for universal conscience. My note however, was addressed to the rule of law. Some facts are difficult to explain in the rationale of rule of law, and the consequences can be many. For example, an scenario is the one depicted in a book by Stanislaw Lem, the official poet of the polish communist regime, entitled "The congress of futurology". Some kind of conflicts do harm specially the innocents, and although the number of victims is not too high, they severely touch the mind of many. There is even people that do not distinguish between the September-11 terror attack, and the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Si vis pacem para bellum, is a dangerous approach to peace and safety today and ever
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real question is: "Who designed these revenge mechanisms into us, and the other animals who possess them?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author repeatedly asserts that the mechanisms are the result of design, which is a horrendously bad position for an article nominally about science to make.
Evolution is not a design process. There is no 'design' in the makeup of living organisms.
Scientific American needs to do a better job of prohibiting slipshod, sloppy, lazy writing like this.
Other than that, I completely agree that revenge exists because it has multiple types of values. I'm unabashed to acknowledge my personal desire for revenge when someone has harmed me, my child, or someone I am responsible for. The revenge impulse is tempered by social considerations, some of which people are free to interpret as morality, but the impulse is still there. And I'm happy it is.
"the Bible says that Apollo is the same as Abbadon, the exterminator "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI need to give a sound reply when the Bible is cited. You make mention of the Bible book of Revelation, chapter 9, verse 11 : "They have over them a king, the angel of the abyss. In Hebrew his name is A•bad´don, but in Greek he has the name A•pol´lyon. "
Abaddon and Apollyon both mean destroyer. This angel is God’s executioner. But God’s judgements are always prefaced by an explanation of motives, warning signals and a way to escape.
You seem to say that Apollo is known in the Bible and therefore there is no need to separate strict monotheism from polytheism. The name Apollyon means destroyer for the average greek in the first century. If this name was commonly associated to the worship of a certain god, it does not mean its basic meaning disappeared. Similarly, the greek word Hades and the Hebrew word Scheol both refer to the grave. But, in a different context, one would take Hades to be the god of Death.
Simply, some ancient societies were so permeated with idolatry that everyday words also had a religious coloration.
homeostasis
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