Stuff You Should Know - Revenge: Bitter, Not Sweet

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Someone cuts you off in traffic or makes fun of your friend and all you can think of is how to get back at them and then some. But wait! Research has found that taking revenge actually makes you feel worse in the long run. Learn about what to do instead.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry Tier two and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast about revenge. Brench? We've done an episode on, it was like a top 10 on cases, legendary cases of revenge. Oh, yeah, I remember that. But we didn't talk much about revenge itself.

And I thought it was high time. We've been dancing around it for decades now. And here we are. I thought this is a great idea. So kudos to you, because Dave helped us out with this one. And it's a lot of like science and studies have sort of, and I'm not gonna spoil anything,

but have sort of produced results that fly in the face of what one might typically think about revenge and what it means for the person getting the revenge. Yeah, I think most people, how we feel about revenge, it's from watching movies, and it's like deeply satisfying to watch the bad guy who deserves revenge, get their come up, right? Sure is. Or even be killed.

Just like, yes, that guy deserved that kind of thing. But in reality, carrying out acts of revenge are, they just, it's not like the movies, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And yet, there's a lot of evidence of revenge in real life. So much so that the New York police department came out with a study in 2012 and found out that 42% of the homicides in New York were motivated by revenge.

Man. So, and that actually kind of underscores like a problem with revenge is that when you enact vengeance on somebody and you leave them alive, almost invariably that person feels like you overdid in response to what they did. It was disproportionate. So now they have to strike back again and it can go back and forth until somebody dies or else somebody can die right away as the first active revenge. But the point of the whole thing is that once you do carry out revenge, no matter if it's petty, like, citing somebody up for spam or killing somebody in response to whatever slight,

like road rage, they cut you off in traffic. You don't feel good afterward. You actually feel worse. And that's the underlying point of this entire episode. Yeah, you know, my favorite petty, I don't do it, but my favorite petty revenge to witnesses is pin. And it's so dumb. Everyone just settle down. It's on a highway when someone is on an expressway and they clean their windows and it gets all over

the car behind them. I see people all the time race in front of that person and do the same thing. Oh my god really. Yeah. That is petty. That is Tom Petty. That's not Tom Petty because Tom Petty was great. That's just petty. And I also wanted to say too, you talked about revenge coming back harder or whatever. Emily has her own personal saying, like when we're messing around and I like, I will do something to her or I'll say something kind of mean as a joke. She'll, she'll eviscerate me. And she calls it coming back double. She goes, I come back double.

Oh boy. I have one of those people that, I thinks she gets pushed into corner and man, she comes out hard. So it's a good trait, I think, and one to be wary of at the same time. Yes, I'm suddenly way more wary of Emily than I was before. Luckily, I've always stayed on her good side.

You wouldn't come at it, I'm late anyway. You're smart. No. So there's a lot of questions revolving around revenge. If we know for a fact it feels good to think about but then feels bad to do. Despite the fact that when we're thinking about it, we're like, this is going to feel good.

It's not the act of thinking about it that feels good. It's fantasizing about how good it's gonna feel to get that person back. It's at the universe right again. To do all sorts of things that revenge allegedly does and it turns out when you carry out an act of revenge you are playing the chump to evolution. On behalf of society as a whole. And that's kind of like the whole basis of a revenge.

There's a evolutionary instinct that's very, very old. It's found extensively in the animal kingdom. And it really collides with the modern evolved humans that live in these complex societies we've formed today. We put those two things together, and interesting podcasts comes out. That's right. What you're talking about in the animal kingdom is also called retaliatory aggression.

And that is the idea that, so let's say, a lion, a mama goes out and kills an animal to leave for her little cubs to eat. Another animal is like, oh, you know, let me see if I can sneak in there and eat some of that too. The mom of lion doesn't just scare this thing off to preserve that meat for the kids. The mom of lion goes and hunts down and kills that animal.

Yes, they come back double Emily's style. Right, I mean like the problem solved that hyena has been chased away, but to leave your kids and go find it and kill it, that seems retaliatory and really aggressive. Yeah, and this next one too, I'm gonna mention, these are interesting, because it made me sort of question the idea of revenge versus punishment.

Right. Because I think those are different things, but the Reese's Monkey, we've talked a lot about their vocalizations, like they're all about the group, or they should be at least. And like when they find food, let's say they will tell everyone, hey, I found food. But if a Reese's Monkey is ever like, you know, I'm going to have a little bit of this first before I call out. And if they find that out, there's a punishment for that Reese's Monkey. I don't think they kill it, but there is a punishment, and this is the idea that these retaliatory aggressions are deterrents. It's like a punishment for everyone to see to prevent future transgressions.

Like, hey, did you hain to see that? Did you other Reese's Monkeys see that? So that would be an advantageous thing, evolutionarily speaking, so that gene gets passed on. Yeah, because the more you're prone to do that, the likelier you are to not have food stolen from you for your kids, the likelier it is for your kids to survive and your lineage to survive. So it makes sense evolutionarily speaking, this retaliatory aggression does at least right?

Yeah, which I would still argue is punishment more than revenge. I think there's a lot of the emotional component that's missing, but we're getting to that. Absolutely, I think you're absolutely right. And there's a story, a couple of stories of tigers actually engaging in what can only be described as revenge. And it's very much up in the air whether what we're witnessing is actual revenge, but like, like there is a very famous story out of Russia where like a poacher not only shot a tiger, but also took some of their kill and that the tiger tracked the guy down, found his

his little lodging, destroyed everything he could find in lodging and then waited outside for the hunter to come back and then kill them. And the tiger managed to hold this idea in his head, where I think it was her head for up to maybe 24 hours after the hunter shot her. There's a couple of stories out there that seem to pertain to tigers specifically. That it's almost like it does contain an emotional component to it. But for the most part, yes, it's solving a problem and then maybe preventing future problems among animals.

Yeah, one of my favorite sayings is a revenge is a meal, best sort of cold. I don't know why, because I'm not a revenge guy, really. But I think that is just such a great saying. I just like it, you know, there's something about like, oh no, no, no, the real revenge is like when you wait around for a while. Oh, yeah. And then when you might not be suspected, you come back and take that revenge. Yeah, because if you just immediately do it in response,

you're a hothead in a dummy. Anybody can do that, but to sit there and really stew on in, figure out the best way to really get back at the person, that takes intellect. Yeah, I agree. And a little bit of craziness, I just have to say. All right, so now we can get to the humans as far as evolution is concerned.

We have that same sort of instinct in grain in our DNA for that retaliatory aggression. Our ancestors, when they were living in hunter-gatherer groups, was a lot of relying on one another, obviously, a lot of communication and cooperation. And thus, a lot of punishing to be done if people either were outsiders or people inside the group didn't cooperate and do the right thing. Yes. And so this is again the same thing what you're talking about. You're punishing the person who transgressed you're also

deterring future behavior. And the more we became social, the more important this kind of stuff became, because we started depending on other people. And so as a result, we started monitoring one another. And that in and of itself can can act as a deterrent in the future because you know that there's a vengeance instinct. And there's a set amount or set structure of like norms and rules. And then other people are watching you to see what you're doing and

you're watching them. And that kind of creates an atmosphere of conformity. And you can say what you want about conformity. But if you have a large group of people following the same rules, you're taking care of a really basic problem and issue and you can then kind of evolve more into more and more complex societies. Yeah. That's, I saw one person say that revenge is ultimately what provided the basis for human civilization and allowed it to grow, knowing that there was such a thing as revenge. That's human to be capable of it.

Totally. So, kind of put a pin in that for a second, because we should talk about this idea of sweet revenge. That's a word that's often associated with revenge, and you talked about the fantasy of revenge. And it's a fantasy because, for very good reasons, if you are physically hurt obviously, or emotionally, or psychologically wounded by somebody, it's a natural instinct to think about getting back at that person.

And the feelings that come with that take place in a part of the brain called the dorsal striatum. And it's the same part of the brain that controls the reward system of like, hey, that pecan pie tastes great, that sexual orgasm feels amazing, or the drug that really want to take feels good. It's that same lizard brain pathway that revenge lights up, that lights up whenever you do

anything that feels rewarding or satisfying for somebody. Yeah, it's extraordinarily powerful and hard to deny and overcome because it's just such a basic response, right? Totally. But again, the problem in this is where the tension arises, we have evolved to a way where we've created these societies with rules and expectations that in part say like you can't carry out revenge it's not okay and we you know that that's not okay as a modern human living and modern human society and yet we have that part of our brain that really powerful basic part of our brain telling us to do

it and but we know we're not supposed to and that's kind of like the point in human evolution that we live in right now. That's right. Um, should we take a break? Sure. All right, that sounds like a good stopping point. So we'll take says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to MPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the host and journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories Black Truths on the iHeart Radio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. On his new podcast, six degrees with Kevin Bacon, join Kevin for inspiring conversations with celebrities who are working to make a difference in the world, like musical artist, Jewel. And what an equal opportunist misery is, it doesn't care if you're black or white or rich or poor or famous or homeless, if you are raised in misery systems, it's perpetual. Kevin is the founder of the nonprofit organization, 6-Degrees.org.

Now he's meeting with like-minded actors who share a passion for change, like Mark Ruffalo. You know, I found myself moving upstate in the middle of this fracking fight, and I'm trying to raise kids there, and my neighbors, like willing to poison my water. These conversations between Kevin and activist Matthew McConaughey will have you ready to lean in, learn, and inspire to act. They're all in the wrong track, help get on the right track. If you're on the right track, let's help them double down on that and see the opportunities stay on the right track for success in the future.

Listen to 6 degrees with Kevin Bacon on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Evidence wise, we had virtually no evidence. We had the word of a 15-year-old who told lies, a lot of lies. A lot, a lot, a lot. In 1995, Detective Tony Richardson was trying to figure out who killed a fellow officer, Deputy Bill Hardy? Without solid evidence, the case comes down to who is believed and who is ignored.

We did commit to an innocent man. And he's been on death row all these years, and I didn't know it. I'm Beth Schalburn from Lava for Good Podcasts. This is Ear Witness. Listen to Ear Witness on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and to hear episodes with no ads, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So Chuck, one of the things about Revenge that makes it different from the drug that you

were talking about or the orgasm or whatever is that when you think of it, it's more fulfilling than when you actually do it. So like if you think about a drug, you might, there might be pleasurable, but it's probably nothing compared to what the drugs doing in your brain when you actually take it. That's not true with revenge. Not only is the thought of fantasy of revenge more fulfilling and that will hit that limbic system harder, when you actually do carry out an act of revenge, it actually creates negative feelings in you as well. Yeah, which is interesting because like, how can an idea of something, how can a fantasy of something trigger the same cascades of the other pleasurable things in your life that you're actually doing?

And when you think about it, it actually does make sense because revenge, actually taking revenge is risky. Thinking about revenge, fantasizing about revenge is not risky, per se. I mean, it could be dangerous for, a negative for a person, perhaps eventually. If you like, you become obsessed with it, but initially, it's a feel good feeling, but carrying through on it can be risky.

If you go to, if you're the hunter, gather a group and someone invades your group and steals your meat, you could go, you could just sit there and think about how great it would be to get them back, and that's probably the safest move, or you could actually go to that other camp and try and kill that person, but you're taking a big risk at that point. You individually are. That's right. But you're doing it on behalf of the group or the group benefits, whether you're doing

it on their behalf or not. That's right. If you didn't do anything though, that group, not just you, but the group you're a member of, would seem weak to other groups. Yeah. And it's, it sounds really like kind of chromagnin or something like that. But that's it. It's important. You can't have like I was saying before you can't have society without the knowledge that if you transgress there will be Consequences for it. I saw I saw it put there's a neurologist and psychologist named Jeff Victoroff He said that

reciprocal altruism which is how people cooperate between groups and within groups That it rewards and requires a costly signal demonstrating risk taking on behalf of the in group. So for people to be able to trade with one another, for people to be able to get along in a society and not kill each other, whatever, you have to know that there's a threat to you if you transgress. It has to be there, or else people will inevitably invariably cheat or kill you or do whatever. And it's a really basic paranoid way of looking at the world.

But if you start to study revenge, it seems like it's a linchpin of society as it's a state. There's just, you can't have a society, animal or human without that, that threat hanging over you of revenge. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I got another quote, and this is the idea, kind of supports the idea that the revenge itself isn't, you know, it's risky and it could be bad for you. It's really the idea of it that's better, or at least better for the individual. This from Francis Bacon, a man that's studying revenge keeps least better for the individual. This from Francis Bacon,

a man that's studied revenge keeps his own wounds green which otherwise would heal and do well. And that's sort of the thing that has come up over and over again in studies that we're gonna be talking about is that the path of the Buddha, the getting over things and not seeking revenge is really the path that ultimately

will bring someone, what, satisfaction? Tranquility? Yeah, tranquility. Maybe not satisfaction, actually. Yeah, I think it's getting past the need for satisfaction that will lead you to the point that you really want to get to, which is feeling good again, but like you felt before you were wronged. Right. The thing is, is with no wronged.

The thing is, is with revenge, what, again, what you have is an innate automatic impulse to smash the other person in the face, to get back at them for them insulting you or your family or your favorite football team or whatever. It's a really basic instinct that if you can learn to overcome, not just you as an individual can evolve, but we as a society can evolve. The thing is, is you still need that for just to keep society going and functioning, what we've figured out as further evolved humans that we can externalize that revenge instinct and imbue our institutions with that, where we've created court systems and justice systems. They're responsible for carrying

out acts of vengeance or retribution or writing wrongs in serving justice. On behalf of the individuals of society and as society, for society as a whole, so that we don't have to carry out acts of revenge on one another. In fact, we have rules now that if you do carry out an act of revenge, you can be punished by those same institutions that are there to enact vengeance on your behalf. Yeah, because what happened is, you know, we went from the hunter gatherers where you literally

had to do this for your group to survive, to eventually settling down once we became farmers and settlers and eventually urbanites, and those became those same instincts were there, but they became moral codes. And all of a sudden, you know, we had these moral codes like you don't cheat on your friend's wife and stuff like that. And you know, that's not punishable by death, but that revenge instinct is still there to overcome these moral codes.

There was a psychologist named Herbert Gintus talked about revenge seeking as moral behavior, individual secret revenge, not when they've been hurt, but when they've been morally wronged, I would also argue that some people's secret revenge when they literally have been physically hurt as well. But it's also a morally wronging that happens if someone jumps you and beats you up at a football game or something. And that's actually, that's attention that philosophers have been trying to figure out for a while. John Stuart Mill was a fan of the deterrent explanation of revenge or punishment or whatever you want to call it.

And he was saying like with the animal kingdom, when you, when you punish the transgressor, you're, you're deterring future behavior by making an example of them. Emmanuel Kant said, no, revenge exists because when somebody transgresses, against a person, you're being morally wronged and just remove everything else, morally speaking, that person deserves to be punished. And he put it in a really kind of alarming way, But philosophers always operate on the fringes anyway to make their points. Right. He was saying that a genuinely, I guess a legitimate society, even if it was disbanding, it was in the act of disbanding, that they were, they were required to go in and kill all of the remaining prisoners,

all the murderers, like go execute the rest of the murderers. Just because your society's disbanding makes no excuse whatsoever for the people that you've imprisoned that transgress against the society because they committed a moral wrong that is larger and more important than any any individual or even any society And that they deserve to be punished and that that's the function of revenge according to Kant. Oh interesting. Yeah, it's kind of kind of vengeance. Conn was He was serious man. Yeah, I think came back double You mentioned earlier, you know, we have systems set up, you know, court systems, police forces, things like that.

Uh, these days, but it's interesting that day found that, um, historically, these, you know, places in the world where, uh, the cultures were what you would call like a culture of honor, uh, were more prone to, you know, commit acts of violence as revenge, like the American South was, South was historically known as a culture of honor where you would go out and defend the honor or fight somebody or have a shootout with somebody. I saw specifically that's white Southern culture

that patterns of African-American retribution or crimes like that don't really vary geographically. That's the white American South is the one that does that. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think that's the white American style is the one that does that. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I think that's what they're talking about is sort of pre-antibelum and stuff like that. Middle Eastern cultures. Middle Eastern cultures historically can kind of be the same way as far as revenge goes,

restoring honor. And they found, and this is what gets really interesting, is that cultures and areas that have a history of weak law enforcement maybe engage in revenge more often. When you hear about like street justice, you might think of a low income community that maybe mistrust the system. They don't think the courts or the police are on their side to begin with, or would take care of them. So that's where you're going to see more sort of street justice revenge carried out. Right. And then same with workplace environments in schools, apparently three and five school shootings from 1974 to 2020 were acts of vengeance or revenge. I'm surprised it was actually that low over ratio. And then if you work in a place where your complaints to a management or whatever seem

to be falling on deaf ears, that can also lead to vengeance in the workplace like workplace shootings. Like remember in our going postal episode, what like the common factor was that management was not only like dismissing complaints about bullying, they were often engaged in bullying themselves. Yeah. And like it doesn't justify or excuse it, but that is an example of somebody

tearing out an act of revenge at least in their mind. Yeah, for sure. You were talking about philosophers earlier. Now we get to finally talk about our old friend, Sigmund Freud, and Joseph Brewer, his mentor, because they had what was known as the catharsis theory of aggression or the hydraulic model. And this is the idea is that a lot of psychosis, or most of them, were repression, and it was negative emotion that was building up. And if you repress these emotions, if you had these negative emotions, if you have anger

toward someone or frustration and it builds up like a hydraulic pump, eventually you're going to pop, you're going to have what's called a catharsis or Greek, meaning cleansing or purging. And you will release that in an unhealthy way, which is probably going to be revenge. Freud said it could manifest as hysteria, and here's the thing though, is that stuff falls apart when you actually apply science to it. They have found that, you know, you know, punching a punching bag can maybe give you an immediate relief, but

a lot of times that stuff only serves to work you up more when you apply science to it. Yeah, because the basis of the catharsis theory was that rather than going and killing the person who wronged you, you could go hit that punching bag and pretend the punching bag was them and you would get out that repressed anger and feel better and could move on. But yes, starting in I think the 50s, they were like, wait a minute, this is not right at all. It turns out that when you do that, it just extends that the sour feelings that cause you to want revenge in the first place. And like we said, if you can find a way to forgive or forget or move on or whatever, you will ultimately be happier in the long run. And even immediately compared to somebody who actually carries out an act of revenge or even goes and punches

a punching bag, pretending like it's the person they want to carry out an act of revenge against. Yeah, there's a that psychology you're talking about, R.H. Hornberger. One of the studies they did, he would have an actor come in and like insult someone in a study. Can you just see Ted Davis from doing this early in his career? Yeah, you have, which look at that nose. So somebody would get really mad, apparently, and be instructed to go bang nails, hit nails into a board for 10 minutes.

You know, apparently let out that frustration and aggression. They're their fists. That's right. Yeah, they're half of the people. I just had to sit there and think about it for 10 minutes. And then they were given a chance to criticize the person who insulted them. And if you subscribe to Freud and the catharsis theory, then the nail pounders would have been relieved and their aggression would have been let out and they would have been less hostile.

But the exact opposite happened. They were even more hostile after they pounded those nails toward the actor than the people who did nothing. Yeah, that was Hornberger in the 50s. It's still being proven today. There's a psychologist named Brad Bushman who made a slightly more robust study of the whole thing, but it followed essentially the same methodology where you were thinking about whoever you wanted to get revenge on while you were hitting a punching bag.

Or another group was hitting a punching bag, but they were told to think about the health benefits of boxing. And then the other one didn't punch anything, the third group. And they found that that the rumination group was the one who displayed the most anger. And then the distraction group who were also punching the bag, but thinking about how great boxing is, they were second. And then the last group, the people who didn't punch anything, they were the happiest. They were the least hostile as a result afterward. And, you know, again, we're getting into social psychology territory here, but these people are working with the best they can while staying within ethical boundaries. Like you can't actually harm somebody, but they do have ways of making you

But they do have ways of making you feel insulted or cheated. That's another big one too. And when you're in one of these experiments, you don't know that they're researching revenge. You think they're researching how well you can play like a game with others or something. You have no idea that that's what they're researching. So there are some pretty good models for testing revenge without actually putting anyone in harm's way.

Yeah, for sure. Should we take a break? Yeah, let's. All right, let's take a break. And we'll talk a little bit about sometimes revenge can feel good and explain those studies as well. Rewind the way, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, let's go! Go, go, let's go! Go! Everyone in our country has a voice.

It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to NPR's Black Stories Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the hosts and journalism who've always spoken truth to power. Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories Black Truths on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Everness wise, we had virtually no evidence we had the word of a 15-year-old who told lies a lot of lies. In 1995, Detective Tony Richardson was trying to

figure out who killed a fellow officer, Deputy Bill Hardy. Without solid evidence, the case comes down to who is believed and who is ignored. We did come into Innocent Man. And he's been on death row all these years, and I didn't know it. I'm Beth Shelburn from Lava for Good Podcasts. This is Ear Witness. Listen to Ear Witness on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes with no ads, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. On his new podcast, Six Degrees with Kevin Bacon joined Kevin for inspiring conversations with celebrities who are working to make a difference in the world, like musical artist,

Jewel. And what an equal opportunist misery is, it doesn't care if you're black or white or rich or poor or famous or homeless. If you are raised in misery systems, it's perpetual. Kevin is the founder of the nonprofit organization, 6-Degrees.org. Now he's meeting with like-minded actors who share a passion for change, like Mark Ruffalo. You know, I found myself moving upstate in the middle of this fracking fight, and I'm trying to raise kids there, and my neighbors, like willing to poison my water.

These conversations between Kevin and activist Matthew McConaughey will have you ready to lean in, learn, and inspire to act. They're all in the wrong track, help get on the right track. If you're on the right track, let's help them double down on that and see the opportunities stay on the right track for success in the future. Listen to 6 degrees with Kevin Bacon on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, before we broke, we talked about the fact that Revenge basically actually undertaking

the revenge or in the studies at least it's not revenge, but letting out that aggression, thinking about the person who did you wrong, we put some heavy bag, really just makes you feel worse. Revenge under the right circumstances can make you feel better, apparently, according to the studies of German psychologist Mario, I'm sorry, he's a psychological scientist Mario goldvizza and this gets a little interesting I think he talked about comparative suffering and the notion that when you see the person who wronged you suffer might restore a balance an emotional balance to yourself into the

universe at large even that and his other theory of the what's called the understanding hypothesis which is that if the under the person who did you wrong if they suffer that's fine but that's really not enough they have to know that they're suffering because of what they did to you. And that that can actually bring some, I don't know about positive emotions, but make someone feel good, as opposed to feeling worse. Yeah, and he came up with a pretty clever experiment to test which one was correct, comparative suffering or understanding hypothesis.

And essentially what happened was the research participants thought that they were trying to compete for raffle tickets with another person who was in another room. They were paired up with a team member, yeah partner. And after they won all the raffle tickets, they were told that they and the partner could divvy them up between them. And basically all of the participants, you know, cut them in half, distribute them evenly, but they found that the other people had really shorted them on their tickets. Their partner had really kept a bunch of tickets rather than distributing them evenly, so they had been wronged in some way. They were given a chance to

write that wrong by carrying our revenge. They were allowed to redistribute the tickets they were allowed to redistribute the tickets, like a second chance. And in that case, they almost invariably screwed the other person over who would, you know, so they enacted revenge. And then this is where Galwitz are really kind of shown for me. He figured out a way to test

how satisfied those people were with that act of revenge. Yeah, there were, I think 60% of the people ended up shorting them in return. Sometimes even more than they were shorted to begin with, like they came back double, Emily stopped. Right. So he went that one extra step like you were saying, and he said, all right, here's what you do now.

You can write a note to the person and say whatever you want. You can reference the injustice. So one person wrote, sorry for taking the tickets away. And remember now, it gets a little convoluted, but this is someone who initially was shorted and then they took revenge by shorting the other person, maybe even more.

Right. And so they sent them a note that said, sorry for taking tickets away, but unfortunately, maybe even more. Right. And so they sent them a note. They said, sorry for taking tickets away. But unfortunately, you only cared about yourself. That's so childish. So they would write a note of many of them would write notes like saying, I really want you to understand this is why you're getting shorted.

Right. So then what Golewitzer figured out was that he could test understanding hypothesis and comparative suffering by getting two different kinds of notes to the people, that group of participants that had carried out revenge and then sent a note saying, I wronged you because you wronged me. And the first note was, it was like contrition. They were saying, yeah, I understand, you really gave it to me because I had wronged you

initially. And then the other note was like, hey, They were saying, yeah, I understand. You really gave it to me because I had wronged you initially. And then the other note was like, hey, you way overdid it. I didn't do it that bad to you. I'm a little indignant. And so if the comparative suffering was correct, just knowing that those people had been put out by the revenge of retaliation should have been satisfying enough. But what Galwitzer found was that that's not the case at all, that the group that got the note back that said, man, you really stuck it to me and I feel like a schmo because of what I did to you.

They were far more satisfied than the people who had just gotten the note back saying, like, I'm a little indignant, you overdid it. So just knowing that they suffered was not enough. They had to know why they were suffering. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. Like, I guess it's the idea of like, if somebody, and if you trust me, no one should ever do anything like this.

It means you're a truly bad person if you do, but if you engage in road rage and someone cuts you off and you follow them to the gas station and like cut their tire when they're in the store and leave, that wouldn't be a satisfying scientifically as if you do that and leave a note that says like, you know, this is what you get for cutting me off. Right. Exactly. So, so you said something, this is what you get for cutting me off. Right, exactly. So you said something in there that I think is really important too, that that group who retaliated the participants, when they retaliated,

they often distributed things even more unfairly than their partner had initially, right? Right, right, right. And that's something that's a big problem with the cycle of revenge that a researcher named Arlene Stillwell from State University of New York at Potsdam pointed out. The problem is, is that when you are on the side of a venging yourself for a wrong, you think that after you've done that, things are right again.

You've created equilibrium in the moral universe again. But when you're the recipient of vengeance, you feel like that person was disproportionate to the wrong that you inflicted. And so like I was saying earlier, now you feel like you might need to get them back again. And it just goes for tat and tit for tat. And that's why the safest, smartest,

was highly evolved, most Buddhist thing you can do is to just short circuit the whole thing and let it go and just move on. And no, yes, you've been morally wrong and you have the power within you to not do a thing about it and like live a happier life than you would if you did something about it. Yeah, and I think that kind of holds with,

they found some pretty good research on what's called impact bias, and that's the idea that people tend to overestimate how much, like once kind of even, sometimes small, single thing will affect their future. They overestimate it, and the example he used is like a kid, a high school kid saying, well, if I don't get an A in this class, it'll ruin my chances to get into a good college.

And that's probably overestimating things because getting into a college is more about this one class, maybe, or this one test. But people underestimate, apparently, like, anger goes the opposite. They will underestimate how hard it is to shake angry thoughts. So you might think that you can get over something by committing the act revenge, but you're really underestimating it, and those feelings are gonna stick with you

even past that revenge act. Yeah, with anger in particular, it's its own thing, it doesn't follow the rules of other emotions, right? And that is, of course, part and parcel with revenge. You are angry, maybe even hateful, and you have to carry out some sort of active vengeance, right? Yeah, and I think there's also something to the idea that even though you think committing

that actor revenge will fulfill you, what it does in the end is you've heard about, and you know, you brought me down to your level. If you go and slash that guy's tire for cutting you off, I got you, but those negative thoughts about yourself are gonna creep in because you have now stooped and done something even worse than cutting someone off. You've cost someone money and ruin their property and potentially created a danger for them.

But even if you were cut off by the person, I've seen people do this too, and you rev your engine and catch up to them and cut them off. Right. So it's literally tip for tat, right? There's no, nothing was done beyond. It's completely even. You're still going to feel bad about having that. You should.

And it's insane how it happens. Like you are just driven by this rage, just feeling like this is what you're supposed to be doing. This is what the universe is demanding. You do to set things right again. And then the moment you do it, you feel terrible about yourself in one way or another. And it is just such a,

just such a BS evolutionary relic that like you're being manipulated by genetics at that point. Yeah. At that moment you're being manipulated. You are a puppet and so the best thing you can do to control your destiny again is to say man like I cut me off. He's a putt or even better that guy cut me off. Maybe he's a as Lake is bleeding and he's got to get to the hospital. You know, there are a lot of things you can do, but when you do that, you're overcoming your genetic destiny

and taking it in an even better direction. Yeah, I mean, it's tough stuff, man, to follow that path for me, for a lot of people. I have tried and tried the more of the older I've gotten to try, try. Right, it's hard. But try to think like, what happened to that person? Why are they like that?

Like when you see someone who's, you can tell us a bad person, not someone who could cut you off in traffic, but. Right, like if you see someone who's in traffic. Right. Now, but when you know someone is doing the wrong thing and someone is just a bad human doing bad things, I try to find some empathy of like, what happened to them that made them that way?

What happened to them today to make them that angry? Yeah. And I try to seek those moments out. It's stuff though. I'm trying to, but to be real, there is a crew of appliance delivery dudes who scratched my wood floor two years ago and the company has refused to pay over a year ago.

And I still am like, should I get those guys back and if so, how? Like I, well, you bring it to their house and scratch your floor. Man, yeah, tip for tat, right? Yeah. But then also dovetails with that idea that tip for tat or even better an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind

as part of that escalation of encyclotaliation. Which is such a great quote and everybody attributes it to Gandhi, but apparently it was not word for word, but the sentiment was by a Canadian named George Perry Graham. He was a journalist on and politician. And huge fan of the raptors. No, Gordon Lightfoot. Oh, of course. Even all comes back to G.L. I think he was probably dead long before Gordon Lightfoot. Oh, of course. Even all comes back to GL. I think he was probably dead long before Gordon Lightfoot was alive. I just wanted to give a little shout out for Camada's sake.

Well, why don't we wrap it all up with this idea of mutually assured destruction? Because it dovetails nicely, right? It does chuck. And here's why. To think it away. So the just as a refresher, we've talked about it before, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction was that if you are a nuclear superpower, say, the Soviet Union during the Cold War, or the United States during the Cold War, if you launched an initial first strike, the other side, even though they were doomed because your nuclear warheads

were in the air, they're going to come and kill everybody there. In the meantime, they were going to launch a retaliatory strike. It would do nothing to save anybody's life on their side. It wouldn't do anything to stop those missiles from coming. It was strictly revenge and the human awareness of the um the concept of revenge and that that was a very real thing that the other side really would do that is what kept people from carrying out an initial strike during the Cold War according to Mutually Assured Destruction Doctorum. That's right. Oh did I take up the whole thing? I'm sorry. You shouldn't be.

I mean I think it's I think it's a great way to end it. It's for all the stalker of revenge. It's like, is that the thing that has kept humanity on the earth? Yeah, I mean, that's what some people say. And I mean, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction keeps getting questioned. Like, was that really what was keeping things in check or was there really like behind the scenes stuff we didn't know about and it seems like more and more, it really was keeping things in check and it seems to be because there was a total awareness that the other side would kill you just because you killed them first. Yeah. So that's revenge everybody. I think if there was one point to this episode, it's get past it as best you can. And if you can, don't be too hard on yourself. Just try again next time.

Yeah. Try that narrow path is narrow. And do your best. It's hard. We all struggle with it. But see if at the next time you want to get revenge on somebody and traffic or wherever, see if you can take that narrow path and calm yourself down and you know there's a really good chance you're going to feel better about yourself and the world's going to be a better place. Just squeeze your steering wheel until you bleed from your palms and your butt cheeks. Since Chuck said butt cheeks everybody knows it's time for listener mail. This is a great follow up. Quite a while ago, not that long ago, but like last year sometime we, or maybe been this

year, I don't know. We read an email about a guy who's had the cussing dentist. Oh, that was just a few months ago, yeah. Okay, I have no concept of time anymore. Understood. The guy who's dentist cussed and we liked it because my doctor Cusses and I just think it's funny. It was a funny story about the Dennis dropping an F-bomb.

We got to pull these F and T or whatever. And then we get this email. Hey guys, my name is Ginger and I'm a dental assistant in Blueville, Maine. The patient came into our office this week and said my boss was famous. She then proceeded to tell us that she listened to your show and at the end you read letters from viewers and went on to say that the patient wrote in about the dentist that swears. I went back, found the episode, August, oh yeah, here it is right here. August 23, August 3rd, really? Wow. Oh boy. That was this month.

Well, we read it to be fair, five weeks before that. Okay. The episode was the last meal ritual and it has to be my boss. Dr. Travis Castleberry said it was okay to read this. Okay. By any chance, the patients say the dentist was, because my boss thinks it could totally be another dentist, but I don't believe it. If he could, could you send me an email back so I could know if I was right, he he. So I did look this up.

The original gentleman did not give the name of the dentist, but he was a dentist in Maine. Wow. And what are the chances that there are two cursing dentists in Maine? They're essentially zero. Probably zero. So Ginger goes on to say he does like to cuss. Obviously not in front of kids, but he's not everyone's cup

of tea, but he surely is a lot of fun to work with. He's a genuine dentist. I don't know what that means, but it takes no BS from root patients. I've worked with him for two years and I still love to come to work every day. Thank you for taking the time to read my email. Thanks to our patients. You have a new listener and I look forward to hearing from you. That is from Ginger, the dental assistant of Dr. Castleberry. So I almost want to save up a cleaning and go see Ginger and Dr. Castleberry sometime. Why not? Just book a plane ride up the main

and do your tea clean and then come on. Have a swim in their cold cold ocean. That email, by the way, was Ginger V. Itis. Yeah, that's you. Sorry, Ginger. Oh, that's vitis. Yeah, that's humor. Sorry, ginger. Oh, that's right. Sorry to everybody who hates puns, including me. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Ginger did, you can send us an email.

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