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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and
Speaker 1: Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: the podcast about Revenge. Revenge. We've done an episode on
Speaker 1: it was like a top ten on cases Legendary Cases
Speaker 1: of Revenge. Oh yeah, I remember that, but we didn't
Speaker 1: talk much about Revenge itself, and I felt it was
Speaker 1: high time. We've been dancing around it for decades now.
Speaker 2: And here we are I thought, this is a great idea,
Speaker 2: So kudos to you because it. Dave helped us out
Speaker 2: with this one. And it's a lot of like science
Speaker 2: and studies have sort of and I'm not going to
Speaker 2: spoil anything, but have sort of produced results that fly
Speaker 2: in the face of what one might typically think about
Speaker 2: revenge and what it means for the person getting the revenge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think most people how we feel about revenge,
Speaker 1: it's from watching movies and it's like deeply satisfying to
Speaker 1: watch the bad guy who deserves revenge get their come upance, right,
Speaker 1: sure is, or even be killed just like, yes, that
Speaker 1: guy deserved that kind of thing. But in reality carrying
Speaker 1: out acts of revenge or they just it's not like
Speaker 1: the movies, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1: And yet there's a lot of evidence of revenge in
Speaker 1: real life, so much so that the New York Police
Speaker 1: Department came out with a study in twenty twelve and
Speaker 1: found out that forty two percent of the homicides in
Speaker 1: New York were motivated by revenge. Man So, and that
Speaker 1: actually kind of underscores like a problem with revenge is
Speaker 1: that when you enact vengeance on somebody and you leave
Speaker 1: them alive, almost invariably that person feels like you overdid
Speaker 1: in response to what they did. It was disproportionate, So
Speaker 1: now they have to strike back again, and it can
Speaker 1: go back and fourth until somebody dies or else somebody
Speaker 1: can die right away is the first act of revenge.
Speaker 1: But the point of the whole thing is is that
Speaker 1: once you do carry out revenge, no matter if it's
Speaker 1: petty exciting somebody up for spam or killing somebody in
Speaker 1: response to whatever slight like road rage, they cut you
Speaker 1: off in traffic, you don't feel good afterward. You actually
Speaker 1: feel worse. And that's the underlying point of this entire episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, my favorite Petty I don't do it,
Speaker 2: but my favorite petty revenge to witnesses is when and
Speaker 2: it's so dumb, everyone just settled down, is on a highway,
Speaker 2: when someone is on an expressway and they clean their
Speaker 2: windows and it gets all over the car behind them.
Speaker 2: I see people all the time race in front of
Speaker 2: that person and do the same thing back then.
Speaker 1: God, really, yeah, that is petty.
Speaker 2: That is Tom Petty. That's not Tom Petty. Could Thom
Speaker 2: Petty was great. That's just and I also wanted to
Speaker 2: say too, you talked about revenge, coming back harder or whatever.
Speaker 2: Emily has her own personal saying, like when we're messing
Speaker 2: around and I like I will do something to her,
Speaker 2: or I'll say something kind of mean as a joke,
Speaker 2: she'll eviscerate me, and she calls it coming back double.
Speaker 3: She goes, I come back double. Oh boy.
Speaker 2: He's one of those people that think she gets pushed
Speaker 2: into corner and man, she comes out hard. So it's
Speaker 2: a good trait, I think, and one to be wary of.
Speaker 1: At the same time, Yes, I'm suddenly way more wary
Speaker 1: of Emily than I was before. Luckily, I've always stayed
Speaker 1: on her good side.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you wouldn't come at it Emily anyway, You're smart.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of questions revolving around revenge. If
Speaker 1: if we know for a fact it feels good to
Speaker 1: think about, but then it feels bad to do despite
Speaker 1: the fact that we're thinking about it, where like this
Speaker 1: is going to feel good, it's not the act of
Speaker 1: thinking about it that feels good. It's fantasizing about how
Speaker 1: good it's going to feel to get that person back
Speaker 1: to set the universe right again, to do all sorts
Speaker 1: of things that revenge allegedly does. And it turns out,
Speaker 1: when you carry out an act of revenge, you are
Speaker 1: playing the chump to evolution on behalf of society as
Speaker 1: a whole, and that's kind of like the whole basis
Speaker 1: of revenge. There's an evolutionary instinct that's very very old.
Speaker 1: It's found extensively in the animal kingdom, and it really
Speaker 1: collides with the modern evolved humans that live in these
Speaker 1: complex societies we've formed today. When you put those two
Speaker 1: things together, an interesting podcast comes out.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: What you're talking about in the animal kingdom is also
Speaker 2: called retaliatory aggression, and that is the idea that so,
Speaker 2: let's say a lion mama goes out and kills an
Speaker 2: animal to leave for her little cubs to eat. Another
Speaker 2: animal is like, ooh, you know, let me see if
Speaker 2: I can sneak in there and eat some of that too.
Speaker 2: The mama lion doesn't just scare this thing off to
Speaker 2: preserve that meat for the kids. The mama lion goes
Speaker 2: and hunts down and kills that animal. Yes, that's they
Speaker 2: come back double Emily style right.
Speaker 1: I mean, like the problem solved, the hyena has been
Speaker 1: chased away, But to leave your kids and go find
Speaker 1: it and kill it, that is seems retaliatorially aggressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this next one too, I'm gonna mention these
Speaker 2: are interesting because it made me sort of question the
Speaker 2: idea of revenge versus punishment, right, because I think those
Speaker 2: are different things. But the Teresis monkey, We've talked a
Speaker 2: lot about their vocalizations, like they're all about the group,
Speaker 2: or they should be at least, And like when they
Speaker 2: find food, let's say they will tell everyone, hey, I
Speaker 2: found food. But if a Riesei's monkey is ever like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm gonna have a little bit of this
Speaker 2: first before I call out. And if they find that out,
Speaker 2: there's a punishment for that Reese's monkey. I don't think
Speaker 2: they kill it, but there is a punishment. And this
Speaker 2: is the idea that these retaliatory aggressions are deterrence. It's
Speaker 2: like a punishment for everyone to see to prevent future
Speaker 2: trans aggressions like hey, did you hyena see that? Did
Speaker 2: you other Reesis monkeys see that? So that, you know,
Speaker 2: would be an advantageous thing evolutionarily speaking, So that gene
Speaker 2: gets passed on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the more the more you're prone to do that,
Speaker 1: the likelier you are to not have food stolen from
Speaker 1: you for your kids, the likelier it is for your
Speaker 1: kids to survive and your lineage to survive. So it
Speaker 1: makes sense evolutionarily speaking, this retaliatory aggression does at least right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I would still argue is punishment more than revenge.
Speaker 2: I think there's an emotional component that's missing, but we're getting.
Speaker 1: To that absolutely. I think you're absolutely right. And there's
Speaker 1: a story, a couple of stories of tigers actually engaging
Speaker 1: in can only be described as revenge, and it's very
Speaker 1: much up in the air whether what we're witnessing is
Speaker 1: actual revenge. But like, like, there was a very famous
Speaker 1: story out of Russia where like a poacher not only
Speaker 1: shot a tiger but also took some of their kill,
Speaker 1: and that the tiger tracked the guy down, found his
Speaker 1: little lodging, destroyed everything he could find in the lodging,
Speaker 1: and then waited outside for the hunter to come back
Speaker 1: and then kill them. And that the tiger managed to
Speaker 1: hold this idea in his head. I think it was
Speaker 1: her her head for up to maybe twenty four hours
Speaker 1: after the hunter shot her. There's a couple of stories
Speaker 1: out there that seem to pertain to tigers specifically that
Speaker 1: it's almost like it does contain an emotional component to it.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, yes, it's it's solving a
Speaker 1: problem and then maybe preventing future problems among the animals.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, one of my favorite sayings is revenge is
Speaker 2: a meal best serve cold. I don't know why, because
Speaker 2: I'm not a revenge guy really, but I just I
Speaker 2: think that is just such a great saying.
Speaker 3: I just like it.
Speaker 2: You know, there's something about like, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 2: the real revenge is like when he waited around.
Speaker 3: For a while.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and then when you would might not be suspected,
Speaker 2: you come back and take that revenge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if you just immediately do it in response,
Speaker 1: you're a hot head and a dummy. Anybody can do that.
Speaker 1: But to sit there and really stew on it and
Speaker 1: figure out the best way to really get back at
Speaker 1: the person that takes intellect Yeah, I agree, and a
Speaker 1: little bit of craziness. I just have to say.
Speaker 2: All right, so now we can get to the humans.
Speaker 2: As far as evolution is concerned, we have that same
Speaker 2: sort of instinct ingrained in our DNA for that retaliatory aggression.
Speaker 2: Our ancestors when they were living in hunter gatherer groups,
Speaker 2: was a lot of relying on one another, obviously a
Speaker 2: lot of communication and cooperation, and thus a lot of
Speaker 2: punishing to be done if people either were outsider people
Speaker 2: inside the group didn't cooperate and do the right thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, and so this is again the same thing what
Speaker 1: you were talking about. You're punishing the person who transgressed.
Speaker 1: You're also deterring future behavior. And the more we became social,
Speaker 1: the more important this kind of stuff became, because we
Speaker 1: started depending on other people, and so as a result,
Speaker 1: we started monitoring one another, and that in and of
Speaker 1: itself can act as a deterrent in the future, because
Speaker 1: you know that there's a vengeance instinct, and there's a
Speaker 1: set amount or set structure of norms and rules, and
Speaker 1: then other people are watching you to see what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and you're watching them, and that kind of creates an
Speaker 1: atmosphere of conformity. And you say what you want about conformity,
Speaker 1: but if you have a large group of people following
Speaker 1: the same rules, you're taking care of a really basic
Speaker 1: problem and issue and you can then kind of evolve
Speaker 1: more into more and more complex societies. Yeah, that's I
Speaker 1: saw one person say that revenge is ultimately what provided
Speaker 1: the basis for human civilization and allowed it to grow
Speaker 1: knowing that there was such a thing as revenge that
Speaker 1: humans were capable.
Speaker 3: A bit totally.
Speaker 2: So kind of put a pin in that for a second,
Speaker 2: because we should talk about this idea of like sweet revenge.
Speaker 2: That's a that's a word that's often associated with revenge.
Speaker 2: And you talked about the fantasy of revenge, and it's
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's a fantasy because for very good reasons,
Speaker 2: if you are physically hurt, obviously or emotionally or psychologically
Speaker 2: wounded by somebody you, it's a natural instinct to think
Speaker 2: about getting back at that person, right, and the feelings
Speaker 2: that come with that take place. And a part of
Speaker 2: the brain called the dorsal striatum, and it's the same
Speaker 2: aim part of the brain that controls the reward system
Speaker 2: of like, hey, that pecan pie tastes great, that sexual
Speaker 2: orgasm feels amazing, or the drug that really want.
Speaker 3: To take feels good.
Speaker 2: It's that same lizard brain pathway that revenge lights up,
Speaker 2: that lights up whenever you do anything that feels rewarding
Speaker 2: or satisfying for somebody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's extraordinarily powerful and hard to deny and overcome
Speaker 1: because it's just such a basic response.
Speaker 3: Right, totally.
Speaker 1: But again, the problem, and this is where the tension arises.
Speaker 1: We have evolved to a way where we've created these
Speaker 1: societies with rules and expectations that in part say like,
Speaker 1: you can't carry out revenge. It's not okay. And you
Speaker 1: know that that's not okay as a modern human living
Speaker 1: in modern human society. And yet we have that part
Speaker 1: of our brain, that really powerful, basic part of our brain,
Speaker 1: telling us to do it, and we know we're not
Speaker 1: supposed to. And that's kind of like the point in
Speaker 1: human evolution that we live in right now.
Speaker 3: That's right, Should we take a break? Sure?
Speaker 2: All right, that sounds like a good stopping point. So
Speaker 2: we'll take a break and we'll come back and we'll
Speaker 2: hit on the thing that you brought up earlier about
Speaker 2: the fact that actually getting that revenge may not be
Speaker 2: so sweet. Stop.
Speaker 1: So, Chuck, one of the things about revenge that makes
Speaker 1: it different from the drug that you were talking about,
Speaker 1: or the orgasm or whatever, is that when you think
Speaker 1: of it, it's more fulfilling than when you actually do it.
Speaker 1: So like if you think about a drug, might it
Speaker 1: might be pleasurable, but it's probably nothing compared to what
Speaker 1: the drugs doing in your brain when you actually take it, right,
Speaker 1: It's not true with revenge. Not only is the thought
Speaker 1: a fantasy of revenge more fulfilling and will hit that
Speaker 1: limbic system harder when you actually do carry out an
Speaker 1: active revenge, it actually creates negative feelings in you as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is interesting because like, how can an idea
Speaker 2: of something? How can a fantasy of something trigger the
Speaker 2: same cascades of the other pleasurable things in their life
Speaker 2: that you're actually doing, And when you think about it,
Speaker 2: it actually does make sense because revenge, actually taking revenge
Speaker 2: is risky. Thinking about revenge fantasies, Sizing about revenge is
Speaker 2: not risky per se. I mean it could be dangerous
Speaker 2: for you know, negative for a person perhaps eventually if
Speaker 2: you like you've become obsessed with it, but initially it's
Speaker 2: a feel good feeling, but carrying through on it can
Speaker 2: be risky. If you go to if you're the hunter
Speaker 2: gatherer group and someone invade your group and steals your meat.
Speaker 2: You could go you could just sit there and think
Speaker 2: about how great it would be to get them back,
Speaker 2: and that's probably the safest move. Or you could actually
Speaker 2: go to that other camp and try and kill that person.
Speaker 2: But you're taking a big risk at that point.
Speaker 1: You individually are that's right, but you're doing it on
Speaker 1: behalf of the group or the group benefits whether you're
Speaker 1: doing it on their behalf or not.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: If you didn't do anything, though, that group, not just you,
Speaker 1: but the group you're a member of, would seem weak
Speaker 1: to other groups. Yeah, and it's it sounds really like
Speaker 1: kind of chromagnet or something like that, But that's it.
Speaker 1: It's important. You can't have like I was saying before,
Speaker 1: you can't have society without the knowledge that if you
Speaker 1: transgress there will be consequences for it. I saw, I
Speaker 1: saw it put. There's a neurologist and psychologist named Jeff
Speaker 1: viktor Off. He said that reciprocal altruism, which is how
Speaker 1: people cooperate between groups and within groups, that it rewards
Speaker 1: and requires a costly signal demonstrating risk taking on behalf
Speaker 1: of the in group. So for people to be able
Speaker 1: to trade with one another. For people to be able
Speaker 1: to get along in a society and not kill each
Speaker 1: other or whatever, you have to know that there's a
Speaker 1: threat to you if you transgress. It has to be
Speaker 1: there or else people will inevitably invariably cheat or kill
Speaker 1: you or do whatever. And it's a really basic, paranoid
Speaker 1: way of looking at the world. But if you start
Speaker 1: to study revenge, it seems like it's a lynchpin of society,
Speaker 1: as it states that there's just you can't have a
Speaker 1: society animal or human without that that threat hanging over
Speaker 1: you of revenge.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I got another quote, and this is the idea kind
Speaker 2: of supports the idea that the revenge itself isn't you know,
Speaker 2: it's risky and it could be bad for you. It's
Speaker 2: really the idea of it that's that's better or at
Speaker 2: least better for the individual. This from Francis Bacon. A
Speaker 2: man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which
Speaker 2: otherwise would heal and do well. And that's sort of
Speaker 2: the thing that you know, has come up over and
Speaker 2: over again and studies that we're going to be talking about,
Speaker 2: is that the you know, the path of the Buddha.
Speaker 2: The getting over things and not seeking revenge is really
Speaker 2: the path that ultimately will bring someone what satisfaction? Tranquility, yeah, tranquility,
Speaker 2: Maybe not satisfaction, actually yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's getting past the need for satisfaction that
Speaker 1: will lead you to the point that you really want
Speaker 1: to get to, which is feeling good again, but like
Speaker 1: you felt before you were wronged. Right. The thing is
Speaker 1: is with no wronged. The thing is is with with
Speaker 1: revenge what again? What you have is an innate, automatic
Speaker 1: impulse to smash the other person in the face to
Speaker 1: get back at them for them insulting you or your
Speaker 1: family or your favorite football team or whatever. It's a
Speaker 1: really basic instinct that if you can learn to overcome,
Speaker 1: not just you as an individual can evolve, we as
Speaker 1: a society can evolve. The thing is is you still
Speaker 1: need that for just to keep society going and functioning.
Speaker 1: What we've figured out as further evolved humans that we
Speaker 1: can externalize that revenge instinct and imbue our institutions with that,
Speaker 1: where we've created court systems and justice systems. They're responsible
Speaker 1: for carrying out acts of vengeance or retribution or righting
Speaker 1: wrongs in serving justice on behalf of the individuals of
Speaker 1: society and as society for society as a whole, so
Speaker 1: that we don't have to care acts of revenge on
Speaker 1: one another. And in fact, we have rules now that
Speaker 1: if you do carry out an act of revenge, you
Speaker 1: can be punished by those same institutions that are there
Speaker 1: to enact vengeance on your behalf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because what happened is, you know, we went from
Speaker 2: the hunter gatherers, where you literally had to do this
Speaker 2: for your group to survive, to eventually settling down. Once
Speaker 2: we became farmers and settlers and eventually urbanites, and those
Speaker 2: became Those same instincts were there, but they became moral codes,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, you know, we had these
Speaker 2: moral codes like you don't cheat on your friend's wife
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, and you know that's not punishable
Speaker 2: by death, but that revenge instinct is still there to
Speaker 2: overcome these moral codes. There was a psychologist named Herbert
Speaker 2: Herbert Gentis that talked about revenge seeking his moral behavior.
Speaker 2: Individual secrivenge not when they've been hurt, but when they've
Speaker 2: been morally wronged. I would also argue, you know, some
Speaker 2: people's secrevenge when they literally they have been physically hurt
Speaker 2: as well, right, But it's also a morally wronging that
Speaker 2: happens if someone you know, jumps you and beats you
Speaker 2: up at a football game or something.
Speaker 1: And that's actually that's attention that philosophers been trying to
Speaker 1: figure out for a while. John Stuart Mill was a
Speaker 1: fan of the deterrent explanation of revenge or punishment or
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, and he was saying, like,
Speaker 1: like with the animal Kingdom, when you you punish the transgressor,
Speaker 1: you're you're deterring future behavior by making an example of them.
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Kant said, no revenge exists because when somebody transgresses,
Speaker 1: you're against a person, you're being morally wronged, and just
Speaker 1: remove everything else. Morally speaking, that person deserves to be punished.
Speaker 1: And he put it in a really kind of alarming way.
Speaker 1: But philosophers always operate on the fringes anyway to make
Speaker 1: their points.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: He was saying that a genuinely I guess, a legitimate society,
Speaker 1: even if it was disbanding, it was in the act
Speaker 1: of disbanding that they were they they were required to
Speaker 1: go in and kill all of the remaining prisoners, all
Speaker 1: the all the murderers, like, go execute the rest of
Speaker 1: the murderers. Just because your society's disbanding makes no excuse
Speaker 1: whatsoever for the people that you've imprisoned that transgressed against
Speaker 1: the society, because they committed a moral wrong that is
Speaker 1: larger and more important than any any individual or even
Speaker 1: any society, and that they deserve to be punished in that.
Speaker 1: That's the function of revenge, according to Khan. Oh interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a kind of vengeance.
Speaker 2: kN was he was serious, man, Yeah, he came back
Speaker 2: double you mentioned earlier. You know, we have systems set up,
Speaker 2: you know, court systems, police forces, things like that these days.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting that they found that historically these places
Speaker 2: in the world where the culture were what you would
Speaker 2: call like a culture of honor, were more prone to,
Speaker 2: you know, commit acts of violence as revenge. Like the
Speaker 2: American South was historically known as a culture of honor,
Speaker 2: where you would go out and defend the honor or
Speaker 2: fight somebody or have a shootout with somebody.
Speaker 1: I saw specifically, that's white Southern culture. That patterns of
Speaker 1: African American retribution or crimes like that don't really vary geographically.
Speaker 1: That's the white American South is the one that does that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's what they're talking about as
Speaker 2: sort of you know, pre Antebellum and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Culture.
Speaker 2: Middle Eastern cultures historically can kind of be the same
Speaker 2: way as far as revenge goes restoring honor, and they
Speaker 2: found and this is what gets really interesting is that
Speaker 2: cultures and areas that have a history of weak law
Speaker 2: enforcement maybe engage in revenge more often. When you hear
Speaker 2: about like street justice, you might think of a low
Speaker 2: income community that maybe mistrust the system, they don't think
Speaker 2: the courts or the police are on their side to
Speaker 2: begin with or would take care of them. So that's
Speaker 2: where you're going to see more sort of street justice
Speaker 2: revenge carried out right.
Speaker 1: And then same with workplace environments and schools. Apparently three
Speaker 1: and five school shootings from nineteen seventy four to twenty
Speaker 1: twenty were acts of vengeance revenge. I'm surprised it was
Speaker 1: actually that low of a ratio. And then if you
Speaker 1: work in a place where your complaints to management or
Speaker 1: whatever seem to be falling on deaf ears, that can
Speaker 1: also lead to vengeance in the workplace like workplace shootings.
Speaker 1: Like remember in our going postal episode, what like the
Speaker 1: common factor was that management was not only like dismissing
Speaker 1: complaints about bullying, they were often engaged in bullying themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like it doesn't justify or excuse it, but that
Speaker 1: is an example of some buddy tarrying out an act
Speaker 1: of revenge, at least in their mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, you were talking about philosophers earlier. Now
Speaker 2: we get to finally talk about our old friend Sigmund
Speaker 2: Freud and Joseph Preuer his mentor because they had what
Speaker 2: was known as the catharsis theory of aggression or the
Speaker 2: hydraulic model. And this is the idea is that a
Speaker 2: lot of psychosis or most of them were repression and
Speaker 2: it was negative emotion that was building up. And if
Speaker 2: you repress these emotions, if you have these negative emotions,
Speaker 2: if you have anger towards someone or frustration, and it
Speaker 2: builds up like a hydraulic pomp, eventually you're going to
Speaker 2: pop or you're going to have what's called a catharsis
Speaker 2: or Greek meaning cleansing or purging, and you will release
Speaker 2: that in an unhealthy way, which is probably going to
Speaker 2: be revenge, Freud said, it could manifest as hysteria. And
Speaker 2: here's the thing, though, is that's stuff falls apart when
Speaker 2: you actually apply science to it. They have found that,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, punching a punching bag can maybe
Speaker 2: give you an immediate relief, but a lot of times
Speaker 2: that stuff only serves to work you up more when
Speaker 2: you apply science to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the basis of the Catharsis theory was that
Speaker 1: rather than going and killing the person who wronged you,
Speaker 1: you could go hit that punching bag and pretend the
Speaker 1: punching bag was them, and you would get out that
Speaker 1: repressed anger and feel better and could move on. But yes,
Speaker 1: starting I think the fifties, they were like this, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, this is this is not right at all.
Speaker 1: It turns out that when you do that, it just
Speaker 1: extends that the sour feelings that cause you to want
Speaker 1: revenge in the first place. And like we said, if
Speaker 1: you can find a way to forgive or forget or
Speaker 1: move on or whatever, you will ultimately be happier in
Speaker 1: the long run, and even immediately compare to somebody who
Speaker 1: actually carries out an act of revenge or even goes
Speaker 1: and punches a punching bag, pretending like it's the person
Speaker 1: they want to carry out an active revenge against.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's that psychologist you're talking about, a Ri Hornberger.
Speaker 2: One of the studies they did, he would have an
Speaker 2: actor come in and like insult someone in a study.
Speaker 1: Can you just see Ted Dats been doing this early
Speaker 1: in his career.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you half witch, look at that nose. So somebody
Speaker 2: would get really mad, apparently and be instructed to go
Speaker 2: bang nails, hit nails into a board for ten minutes. See,
Speaker 2: you know, apparently let out that frustration as their fists.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: The other half of the people just had to sit
Speaker 2: there and think about it for ten minutes, and then
Speaker 2: they were given a chance to criticize the person who
Speaker 2: insulted them. And if you subscribe to Freud and the
Speaker 2: Catharsis theory, then the nail pounders would have been you know, relieved,
Speaker 2: and their aggression would have been let out and they
Speaker 2: would have been less hostile. But the exact opposite happened.
Speaker 2: They were even more hostile after they pounded those nails
Speaker 2: towards the actor than the people who did nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was Hornberger in the fifties. It's still being
Speaker 1: proven today. There's a psychologist named Brad Bushman who made
Speaker 1: a slightly more robust study of the whole thing, but
Speaker 1: it followed essentially the same methodology, where you were thinking
Speaker 1: about whoever you wanted to get revenge on while you're
Speaker 1: hitting a punching bag, or another group was hitting a
Speaker 1: punching bag, but they were told to think about the
Speaker 1: health benefits of boxing, and then the other one didn't
Speaker 1: punch anything, the third group, and they found that the
Speaker 1: rumination group was the one who displayed the most anger,
Speaker 1: and then the distraction group, who were also punching the
Speaker 1: bag but thinking about how great boxing is, they were second.
Speaker 1: And then the last group, the people who didn't punch anything,
Speaker 1: They were the happiest, They were the least hostile as
Speaker 1: a result afterward. Yeah, and you know, again we're getting
Speaker 1: into social psychology territory here. But these people are working
Speaker 1: with the best they can while staying within ethical boundaries,
Speaker 1: like you can't actually harm somebody, but they do have
Speaker 1: ways of making you feel insulted or cheated. That's another
Speaker 1: big one too. And when you're in one of these experiments,
Speaker 1: you don't know that they're researching revenge. You think they're
Speaker 1: researching how well you can play like a game with
Speaker 1: others or something. You have no idea that that's what
Speaker 1: they're researching. So there are some pretty good models for
Speaker 1: testing revenge without actually putting anyone in harm's way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: Should we take a break, Yeah, let's all right, let's
Speaker 2: take a break, and we'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: sometimes revenge can feel good and explain those studies as well.
Speaker 2: All right, before we broke, we talked about the fact
Speaker 2: that revenge basically actually undertaking the revenge, or in these
Speaker 2: studies at least it's not revenge, but you know, letting
Speaker 2: out that aggression, thinking about the person who did you wrong,
Speaker 2: we punched a heavy bag.
Speaker 3: Really just makes you feel worse.
Speaker 2: Revenge, under the right circumstances can make you feel better, apparently,
Speaker 2: according to the studies of German psychologists Mario I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: he's a psychological scientist, Mario Goldwitz, and this gets a
Speaker 2: little interesting. I think he talked about comparative suffering and
Speaker 2: the notion that when you see the person who wronged
Speaker 2: you suffer might restore a balance, an emotional balance, getting
Speaker 2: yourself into the universe at large. Even that and his
Speaker 2: other theory of the what's called the understanding hypothesis, which
Speaker 2: is that if the under the person who did you wrong,
Speaker 2: if they suffer, that's fine, but that's really not enough.
Speaker 2: They have to know that they're suffering because of what
Speaker 2: they did to you. Yeah, and that that can actually
Speaker 2: bring some I don't know about positive emotions, but make
Speaker 2: someone feel good as opposed to feeling worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And he came up with a pretty clever experiment
Speaker 1: to test which one was correct comparative suffering or understanding hypothesis.
Speaker 1: And essentially what happened was the research participants thought that
Speaker 1: they were trying to compete for raffle tickets with another
Speaker 1: person who was in another room. They were paired up
Speaker 1: with a partner team member, yeah, partner, and after they
Speaker 1: won all the raffle tickets, they were told that they
Speaker 1: and the partner could divvy them up between them and
Speaker 1: basically all of the participants, you know, cut them in half,
Speaker 1: distribute them evenly. But they found that the other people
Speaker 1: had really shorted them on their tickets. Their partner had
Speaker 1: really kept a bunch of tickets rather than distributing them evenly,
Speaker 1: so they had been wronged in some way, they were
Speaker 1: given a chance to write that wrong by carrying out revenge.
Speaker 1: They were allowed to redistribute the tickets like a second chance.
Speaker 1: And in that case they almost invariably screwed the other
Speaker 1: person over who would you know, So they enacted revenge.
Speaker 1: And then this is where Goalwitzer really kind of shown
Speaker 1: for me. He figured out a way to test how
Speaker 1: satisfied those people were with that act of revenge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were I think sixty percent of the people
Speaker 2: ended up shorting them in return, sometimes even more than
Speaker 2: they were shorted to begin with, Like they came back
Speaker 2: double Emily styles. So he went that one extra step,
Speaker 2: like you were saying, and he said, all right, here's
Speaker 2: what you do. Now you can write a note to
Speaker 2: the person and say whatever you want. You can reference
Speaker 2: the you know, the justice. So one person wrote sorry
Speaker 2: for taking the tickets away. And remember now it gets
Speaker 2: a little convoluted, but this is someone who initially was
Speaker 2: shorted and then they took revenge by shorting the other person,
Speaker 2: maybe even more right, And so they sent them a
Speaker 2: note they said, sorry for taking tickets away, but unfortunately
Speaker 2: you only cared about yourself. That's so childish, so they
Speaker 2: would write a note of many many of them would
Speaker 2: write notes like saying, I really want you to understand
Speaker 2: this is why you're getting shorted. Right.
Speaker 1: So then what Gallwitzer figured out was that he could
Speaker 1: test understanding hypothesis and comparative suffering by getting two different
Speaker 1: kinds of notes to the people. That group of participants
Speaker 1: that had carried out revenge and then sent a note
Speaker 1: saying I wronged you because you wronged me. And the
Speaker 1: first note was kind of it was like contrician. They
Speaker 1: were saying, yeah, I understand you really gave it to
Speaker 1: me because I had wronged you initially. And then the
Speaker 1: other note was like, hey, you way over did it.
Speaker 1: I didn't do it that bad to you. I'm a
Speaker 1: little indignant. And so if the comparative suffering was correct,
Speaker 1: just knowing that those people had been put out by
Speaker 1: the revenge of retaliation should have been satisfying enough. But
Speaker 1: what Gallwitzer found was that that's not the case at all.
Speaker 1: That the group that got the note back that said, man,
Speaker 1: you really stuck it to me and I feel like
Speaker 1: a schmo because of what I did to you, they
Speaker 1: were far more satisfied than the people who had just
Speaker 1: gotten the note back, saying like, I'm a little indignant
Speaker 1: you overdid it. So just knowing that they suffered was
Speaker 1: not enough. They had to know why they were suffering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's really interesting. Like I guess it's
Speaker 2: the idea of like, if somebody and if you're trust me,
Speaker 2: no one should ever do anything like this. It means
Speaker 2: you're a truly bad person if you do. But if
Speaker 2: you engage in road rage and someone cuts you off
Speaker 2: and you follow them to the gas station and like
Speaker 2: cut their tire when they're in the store and leave,
Speaker 2: that wouldn't be as satisfying scientifically as if you do
Speaker 2: that and leave a note that says like, you know,
Speaker 2: this is what you get for cutting me off.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. So you said something in there that I
Speaker 1: think is really important too, that that group who retaliated
Speaker 1: the participants, when they retaliated, they often distributed things even
Speaker 1: more unfairly than their partner had initially right right, right, right,
Speaker 1: And that's something that's a big problem with the cycle
Speaker 1: of revenge that a researcher named Arlene Stillwell from State
Speaker 1: University of New York at Potsdam pointed out. The problem
Speaker 1: is is that when you are on the side of
Speaker 1: avenging yourself for a wrong, you think that after you've
Speaker 1: done that, things are right again. You've created equilibrium in
Speaker 1: the moral universe again. But when you're the recipient of vengeance,
Speaker 1: you feel like that person was disproportionate to the wrong
Speaker 1: that you inflicted, and so, like I was saying earlier,
Speaker 1: now you feel like you might need to get them
Speaker 1: back again. And it just goes tit for tat and
Speaker 1: tit for tat, And that's why the safest, smartest, most
Speaker 1: highly evolved, most Buddhist thing you can do is to
Speaker 1: just short circuit the whole thing and let it go
Speaker 1: and just move on and know, yes, you've been morally wronged,
Speaker 1: and you have the power within you to not do
Speaker 1: a thing about it and like live a happier life
Speaker 1: than you would if you did something about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that kind of holds with They
Speaker 2: found some pretty good research on what's called impact bias,
Speaker 2: and that's the idea that people tend to overestimate how
Speaker 2: much like one kind of even sometimes small, single thing
Speaker 2: will affect their future.
Speaker 3: They overestimate it.
Speaker 2: And the example he used is like a kid, a
Speaker 2: high school kid, saying, well, if I don't get an
Speaker 2: A in this class, it'll ruin my chances to get
Speaker 2: into a good college. And that's probably overestimating things, because
Speaker 2: getting into a college is more about this one class maybe,
Speaker 2: or this one test. But people underestimate, apparently, like anger
Speaker 2: goes to opposite, they will underestimate how hard it is
Speaker 2: to shake angry thoughts. So you might think that you
Speaker 2: can get over something by committing the act revenge, but
Speaker 2: you're really underestimating it, and those those feelings are going
Speaker 2: to stick with you even past that revenge act.
Speaker 1: Yeah. With anger in particular, it's its own thing. It
Speaker 1: doesn't follow the rules of other emotions, right yeah, And
Speaker 1: that is of course part and parcel with revenge. You
Speaker 1: are angry, maybe even hateful, and you have to carry
Speaker 1: out some sort of act of vengeance, right yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think there's also something to the idea that
Speaker 2: even though you think committing that actor of revenge will
Speaker 2: fulfill you, what it does in the end is it
Speaker 2: you've heard about, like you know, you brought me down
Speaker 2: to your level, Like if you go and slash that
Speaker 2: guy's tire for cutting you off, you know I got you.
Speaker 2: But those negative thoughts about yourself are going to creep
Speaker 2: in because you have now stooped and done something even
Speaker 2: worse than cutting someone off. You you know, cost someone
Speaker 2: money and ruin their property and potentially created a danger
Speaker 2: for them.
Speaker 1: You know, well, even if you were cut off by
Speaker 1: the person, I've seen people do this too, and you
Speaker 1: rev your engine and catch up to them and cut
Speaker 1: them off. Right, So it's literally tip for tad, right,
Speaker 1: there's no nothing was done beyond it's completely even You're
Speaker 1: still gonna feel bad about having should that, And it's
Speaker 1: insane how it happens, Like you are just driven by
Speaker 1: this rage, is just feeling like this is what you're
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing, This is what the universe is
Speaker 1: demanding you do to set things right again. And then
Speaker 1: the moment you do it, you feel terrible about yourself
Speaker 1: in one way or another. And it is just such
Speaker 1: a just such a BS evolutionary relic that like you're
Speaker 1: being manipulated by genetics at that point. Yeah, at that moment,
Speaker 1: you're being manipulated. You are a puppet. And so the
Speaker 1: best thing you can do to control your own destiny
Speaker 1: again is to say, man, that guy cut me off.
Speaker 1: He's a putt or even better, that guy cut me off.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's a his lake is bleeding and he's he's
Speaker 1: got to get to the hospital. You know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things you can do, but when you
Speaker 1: do that, you're overcoming your genetic destiny and taking it
Speaker 1: in an even better direction.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean it's tough stuff, man, to follow that pass
Speaker 2: for me, for a lot of people, I have tried
Speaker 2: and tried, the more of the older I've gotten to
Speaker 2: try try, right, It's hard, but try to think, like
Speaker 2: what happened to that person? Why are they like that?
Speaker 2: Like when you see someone who's you can tell as
Speaker 2: a bad person, not someone who cuts you off in traffic, but.
Speaker 1: Like if you's someone hit learn in traffic.
Speaker 2: No, but when you know someone is doing the wrong thing,
Speaker 2: and someone is just a bad human doing doing bad things,
Speaker 2: I try to find some empathy of like what happened
Speaker 2: to them that made them that way and what happened
Speaker 2: to them today to make them that angry, And I
Speaker 2: try to seek those moments out.
Speaker 3: It's stuff though.
Speaker 1: I'm trying too, But to be real, there's a crew
Speaker 1: of appliance delivery dudes who scratched my wood floor two
Speaker 1: years ago, and the company refusing, has refused to pay,
Speaker 1: refuse to pay over a year ago. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: still am like, should I get those guys back? And
Speaker 1: if so, how like I, well, you break into their
Speaker 1: house and scratch your floor? Man? Yeah, tip for tat?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then also dovetails with that, that idea, that
Speaker 1: tip for tat, or even better, an eye for an
Speaker 1: eye leads the whole world blind as part of that
Speaker 1: escalation and encycle of retaliation. Which is such a great
Speaker 1: quote and everybody attributes it to Gandhi, but apparently it
Speaker 1: was not word for a word, but the sentiment was
Speaker 1: by Canadian named George Perry Graham. He was a journalist
Speaker 1: and a politician and a huge fan of the Raptors.
Speaker 1: No Gordon Lightfoot, oh, of course, even though it comes
Speaker 1: back to g L. I think he was probably dead
Speaker 1: long before Gordon Lightfoot was alive. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: give a little shout out for Canada's sake.
Speaker 2: Well, why don't we wrap it all up with this
Speaker 2: idea of mutually assured destruction because it dovetails nicely, right.
Speaker 1: It does, chuck, And here's why to think it away. So,
Speaker 1: just as a refresher. We've talked about it before. The
Speaker 1: doctrine of mutually assured destruction was that if you are
Speaker 1: a nuclear superpower, say the Soviet Union during the Cold
Speaker 1: War or the United States during the Cold War, if
Speaker 1: you launched an initial first strike, the other side, even
Speaker 1: though they were doomed because your nuclear warheads were in
Speaker 1: the air and going to come and kill everybody there
Speaker 1: in the meantime, they were going to launch a retaliatory strike.
Speaker 1: It would do nothing to save anybody's life on their side.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't do anything to stop those missiles from coming.
Speaker 1: It was strictly revenge and the human awareness of the
Speaker 1: concept of revenge and that that was a very real
Speaker 1: thing that the other side really would do. That is
Speaker 1: what kept people from carrying out an initial strike during
Speaker 1: the Cold War, according to mutually assured destruction doctrine.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: Oh, did I take up the whole thing? I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's it's a great way to
Speaker 2: end it. It's for all this talk of revenge. It's like,
Speaker 2: is that the thing that has kept humanity on the earth?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's that's what some people say. And
Speaker 1: I mean, Yeah, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction keeps
Speaker 1: getting questioned, like was that really what what was keeping
Speaker 1: things in check? Or was there really like behind the
Speaker 1: scenes stuff we didn't know about. And it seems like
Speaker 1: more and more it really was keeping things and check.
Speaker 1: And it seems to be because there was a total
Speaker 1: awareness that the other side would kill you just because
Speaker 1: you killed them first. Yeah, so that's revenge, everybody. I
Speaker 1: think if there was one point to this episode, it's
Speaker 1: get past it as best you can, and if you can't,
Speaker 1: don't be too hard on yourself. Just try again next time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, try that narrow path is narrow, and do your best.
Speaker 2: It's hard, we all struggle with it. But see if
Speaker 2: at the next time you want to get revenge on
Speaker 2: somebody in traffic or wherever, See if you can take
Speaker 2: that narrow path and calm yourself down, and you know,
Speaker 2: there's a really good chance you're gonna feel better about
Speaker 2: yourself and the world's going to be a better.
Speaker 3: Place because of it.
Speaker 1: To squeeze your steering wheel until you bleed from your
Speaker 1: palms and your butt cheeks. Since Chuck said butt cheeks,
Speaker 1: everybody knows that's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: This is a great follow up quite a while ago,
Speaker 2: not that long ago, but like last year. Sometime we
Speaker 2: or it may have been this year, I don't know.
Speaker 2: We read an email about a guy who's had the
Speaker 2: cussing dentist.
Speaker 1: Oh that was just a few months ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I have no concept of time anymore. Understood
Speaker 2: the guy who's dentist cussed, and we liked it because
Speaker 2: my doctor cusses, and I just think it's funny, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a funny story about the dentist dropping and f bomb.
Speaker 2: We got to pull these f and teeth or whatever.
Speaker 2: And then we get this emial. Hey guys, my name
Speaker 2: is Ginger and I'm a dental assistant in Blueville, Main.
Speaker 2: The patient came into our office this week and said
Speaker 2: my boss was famous. She then proceeded to tell us
Speaker 2: that she listened to your show and at the end
Speaker 2: you read letters from viewers, and went on to say
Speaker 2: that the patient wrote in about the dentist that swears.
Speaker 2: I went back found the episode August. Oh yeah, here
Speaker 2: its right here, August twenty three, August third Really.
Speaker 3: Wow, oh boy, that was this month. Well, we read
Speaker 3: it to be fair five weeks before that.
Speaker 2: The episode was the last meal ritual and it has
Speaker 2: to be my boss, doctor Travis Castle.
Speaker 3: By the way, I said it was okay to read this.
Speaker 2: By any chance that the patients say the dentist was
Speaker 2: because my ball thinks it could totally be another dentist,
Speaker 2: but I don't believe it. If you could, could you
Speaker 2: send me an email back so I could know if
Speaker 2: I was right? He he, So I did.
Speaker 3: Look this up.
Speaker 2: The original gentleman did not give the name of the dentist,
Speaker 2: but he was a dentist in Maine. And what are
Speaker 2: the chances that there are two cursing dentists in Maine.
Speaker 1: They're essentially zero, probably zero.
Speaker 2: So Ginger goes on to say he does like to cuss,
Speaker 2: obviously not in front of kids, and he's not everyone's
Speaker 2: cup of tea, but he surely has a lot of
Speaker 2: fun to work with.
Speaker 3: He's a genuine dentist.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that means, but it takes
Speaker 2: no bs from root patients. I've worked with him for
Speaker 2: two years and I still love to come to work
Speaker 2: every day. Thank you for taking the time to read
Speaker 2: my email. Thanks to our patient, you have a new listener,
Speaker 2: and I look forward to hearing from you. That is
Speaker 2: from Ginger, the dental assistant of doctor Castleberry. So I
Speaker 2: almost want to save up a cleaning and go see
Speaker 2: Ginger and doctor Castleberry sometime.
Speaker 1: Why not just book a plane ride up to Maine and.
Speaker 2: To your tea clean and then come on have a
Speaker 2: swim in their cold, cold ocean.
Speaker 1: That email, by the way, was ginger v itis. Sorry Ginger,
Speaker 1: sorry to everybody who hates puns, including me. Well, if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch of this, like Ginger did,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email. Send it off to
Speaker 1: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.