Revenge (Noun)

Revenge (Noun)

1.          Any form of personal retaliatory action against an individual, institution, or group for some alleged or perceived harm or injustice.

Synonyms: payback

Did you know that the search query ‘movie + revenge’ yields 247.000.000 results in 1.20 seconds?! There are many stories built on the plot of revenge: books, movies, operas, plays and myths. Many careers are built on the motivation to get back at others. Story through the grapevine is that the need for revenge is what the successful DreamWorks SKG is built on. After being fired from the Walt Disney Company, $280 million in compensation didn’t do it for Jeffery Katzenberg. In the early 1990s Jeffery was unceremoniously fired by his boss. Fueled by ambition, in search of revenge and a desire to trounce Disney, he co-founded DreamWorks SKG. A Disney competitor that, among others, produced the highly successful movie Shrek. Not only did the movie mock Disney’s fairy tales, some even say its villain is a parody of Katzenberg’s former boss…

No one has ever said revenge is not sweet. Nevertheless, did you even wonder why we feel the need to retaliate at all?

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely decided to look into this phenomenon and set up a small research study intentionally annoying people. With a coffee shop as a setting, a waiter would ask customers to participate in a small 5-minute task in return for $5. Once the task was finished the waiter would come back to collect the task forms and pay participants $5. Along with a receipt that participants were asked to sign, stating they participated and indeed received $5. When handing over the receipt together with the money, the waiter always made sure to give out too much money, as if by mistake. However, one group was deliberately irritated. In the midst of explaining the task the waiter stopped and answered a short telephone call in front of the participants, interrupting the explanation. Would the interruption indeed make people retaliate by keeping the extra cash?

Well, for starters, only a discouraging 45% returned the extra money at all. And yes, indeed, that percentage was much lower among those intentionally annoyed. Only 14% of the participants returned the extra money. So even a small action to annoy us, triggers the need for retaliation. Once we feel that we are not being treated respectfully or rightfully, our urge for revenge seems to kick-in.

In a different research study into the Trust Game (also known as the investment game) Swiss researched added a very interesting component. They offered participants to the option of revenge. What happens then?

The Swiss version of the Trust Game experiment showed that when you are given the option to take revenge on your partner while playing the trust game, people would indeed do so. Even more interesting is that their study shows that, while making this decision, there is increased activity in the area of the brain related to a feeling of pleasure. Suggesting that revenge is pleasurable.

Interestingly enough, not only humans have the urge for revenge. Research has shown it also exists in primates. These findings suggest that both have an inherent sense for justice that plays an important role in maintaining the social order. In other words, trust and revenge are two sides of the same coin: so long as revenge is a possibility, social order is more likely to prevail. Ultimately, revenge is an effect of our need for justice.

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Based on: Dan Ariely,2010, The upside of irrationality

Keith Jensen, Josep Call, Michael Tomasello, 2007, Chimpanzees are rational maximizers in an ultimatum game. Science, October 5

Ernst Fehr, Urs Fischbacher, Michael Kosfeld, 2005, Neuroeconomic Foundations of Trust and Social Preferences: Initial Evidence