Revenge Psychology Shows 58% Prefer Immediate Retribution Than Waiting to Get Vengeance, But Are Not Satisfied

A new study reveals that 58% of the participants prefer immediate retribution than to wait to take action. The study titled "Some Revenge Now or More Revenge Later? Applying an Intertemporal Framework to Retaliatory Aggression," published in the journal Motivation Science, shows that more than half of 1,508 respondents in six trials favored instant but less severe reprisal, even excluding delayed but more severe retaliation.

However, researchers said that preference could shift towards delayed revenge if the person sits and think about it. Around 42% of participants were willing to wait to get more vengeance.

Is Revenge Best Served Hot or Cold?

According to Daily Mail, one of the six experiments asked the participants to play a video game against what they believed was a real opponent. They were then instructed to blast a loud noise to their opponent through the headphones or a louder blast the next day. Meanwhile, two participants of another experiment were put in a virtual chat room wherein they were excluded from the discussions 80% of the time.

Researchers found that immediate revenge is more desirable for more than half of participants than money. Participants in the research who exhibited a preference for delayed-but-greater vengeance were more willing to wait for their desired retaliation than they were for monetary incentives, according to Dr. Samuel West, through Daily Mail.

However, these findings became more complex when those who prefer immediate revenge also had greater antagonistic traits, such as sadism and angry rumination.

Co-author Dr. David Chester told VCU News that when provocations are so severe or when people provoke the 'wrong person' with antagonistic traits, revenge may become a dish best served cold.

Researchers hope that the findings of the study could shed light on aggression or antisocial behavior. They added that the results showed that those who wait to take revenge exhibited greater self-regulation than those who take revenge immediately after being wronged.

Psychology of Revenge

According to an article on the website of the Association for Psychological Science, an experiment by Swiss researchers scanned the brains of people who wanted to take revenge after being wronged in an economic exchange game. These people trusted their partners but ended being fooled because, instead of splitting the money, their partners chose to keep it for themselves.

For a full minute, participants formulated their revenge plan, and their recorded brain activity showed that the caudate nucleus, a part of the brain known to process rewards, was activated.

Although the idea of revenge is delectable, the actual execution carries a bitter cost of time, emotions and physical energy. Psychological scientists have discovered that revenge fails to fulfill its sweet expectations, while behavioral scientists observed that it only prolonged the unpleasantness of the original offense.

Instead of delivering justice, participants in the study only realized that revenge creates a cycle of retaliation partly because the moral equilibrium of a person rarely aligns with other people. That is why the pursuit of revenge has persisted for ages, despite it being distasteful.

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