The bittersweet taste of revenge: On the negative and positive consequences of retaliation

Abstract

Two lines of previous research have found that revenge can make people feel worse, contrary to conventional wisdom about the hedonic benefits (i.e. “sweetness”) of revenge (Carlsmith, Wilson, & Gilbert, 2008; Lambert, Peak, Eadeh, & Schott, 2014). However, such findings appear inconsistent with general principles arising from the justice literature, which implies that people should feel satisfaction when they perceive that transgressors have been punished for their misdeeds. In this paper, we use a variety of different measures of affect (mood, linguistic analyses, direct ratings of emotional reactions) to show that revenge is capable of producing both negative (“bitter”) and favorable (“sweet”) reactions. In particular, we find support for a bittersweet model of revenge, in that such acts concurrently elicit genuinely positive appraisals, over and above the elicitation of negative affect. We consider the implications of our research for a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of revenge.