Go ahead, make my day: Revenge feels, oh, so good
"In (an) experiment, volunteers participated in a game of exchanging money back and forth.
The study combined an economic experiment with a brain scan — an example of the emerging field of "neuro-economics."
If one player made a selfish choice instead of a mutually beneficial one, the other could penalize him. The majority of the players chose to impose the penalty even when it cost some of their own money.
Using positron emission tomography (PET), the researchers determined that deciding to impose this penalty activated a "reward" region of the brain, the dorsal striatum, involved in anticipating enjoyment or satisfaction, whether from cocaine or seeing a pretty face.
The study concludes, "When people punish others who are deceitful, the reward centre of the brain is engaged even if the action yields no apparent benefit."
The researchers also found that the fantasy of revenge is immensely satisfying: "The activation in the dorsal striatum reflects the anticipated satisfaction from punishing defectors" — or, it appears, from seeing them suffer.
As (Stanford University psychology professor Brian) Knutson notes in his commentary, ("Sweet Revenge?" published in Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science)the Swiss researchers "appear to have captured this complex emotional dynamic of schadenfreude with a PET camera."
Also, Knutson explains, "There is a complex emotional dynamic when somebody wrongs us or people we love."
And the response isn't always logical..."
article thanks jason
~We humans are pastry bags filled with emotions.
It's reflective of I-don't-know-what that the world's leaders can never come right out and say that specific acts of terrorism may be acts of revenge. Especially odd when, according to the above story, all humans seem to be hard-wired for revenge and get actual jolts of pleasure from it. After googling the word 'revenge' I've learned that terrorists and journalists often cite revenge as a motive but those speaking for governments never(?) use the term to describe the attack. Nor do governments use the word revenge to describe aggressive actions they might take towards individuals, groups or other states. Not only must states have a monopoly on violence they must control the descriptions of violence?