Behavioral studies from around the world confirm that people who hurt other people are almost always acting in response to a personal grievance—a real or imagined perception of having been wronged, betrayed, shamed, humiliated, or victimized. Recent behavioral and neuroscience studies of what’s happening inside the brains of people with grievances have led to a surprising discovery: activation of revenge desires and the pleasure and craving neurocircuitry of addiction.​

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It turns out that your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs. Grievances cue the brain to crave revenge in much the same way that stress and anxiety, or seeing drug paraphernalia or places of drug use, cue the brains of substance users to crave narcotics. ​

 

Being harmed or treated unfairly, or experiencing anger, disgust, guilt, or shame, is painful and activates the brain’s neural “pain network.” Getting revenge, or even just fantasizing about it, is rewarding, releasing dopamine and activating the brain’s pleasure and reward circuitry. This produces feelings of pleasure that temporarily cover up the pain, making us feel better. For a while. Like drugs and alcohol, the effects wear off quickly and almost always lead to greater pain and suffering. 

 

With addiction, the brain's judgment and executive control function is hijacked, and reward circuity runs amok. When revenge cravings become compulsive and can’t be controlled despite the negative consequences, they can transform perfectly normal, peaceful people into perpetrators of acts of psychological and physical violence and abuse.

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Take a free online quiz to find out how often you think about and seek revenge.

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