Vengeance is self-focused: Comparing vengeful to anger-driven responses

Abstract

Prior definitions and empirical research do not distinguish responses to transgressions driven by feelings of revenge from responses to transgressions driven by feelings of anger. We used autobiographical recalls to examine differences between vengeful and anger-driven responses. Our findings revealed that vengeful responses are not the same as anger-driven responses. Compared to anger-driven responses, vengeful responses resulted more from offences that induce a self-threat, which elicited more intense negative self-conscious emotions and more rumination. Moreover, compared to anger-driven responses, vengeful responses consisted more of behaviours that induced a self-threat to the other person, were motivated more by intrapersonal goals, were more delayed, elicited more positive emotions and resulted in less relationship restoration. Together, these findings suggest that more so than anger-driven responses, vengeance is self-focused.

Keywords:

• Vengeance
• Revenge
• Feelings of revenge
• Anger

The authors would like to thank Kirsten Tjeerdsma for coding the offences and responses.

The authors would like to thank Kirsten Tjeerdsma for coding the offences and responses.

Notes

¹ Although there may be a philosophical difference between vengeance and revenge (Uniacke, 2000), we followed other articles (e.g., Stuckless & Goranson, 1992) in viewing them as synonyms. In our study, we only referred to emotions and used “feelings of revenge” as the emotion for the vengeance/revenge condition.

² Note that, in order to provide meaningful comparisons with vengeance, with ‘anger’ or ‘responses fuelled by anger’, we always mean anger towards an offender, not towards one's self or third parties.

³ We report all measures and do so in chronological order. The materials of this study were based on two pilot studies with student samples and many different measures. For reasons of clarity, we only report the main study, but data of the pilot studies are available upon request.

⁴ With “response” we always mean participants’ behaviour. We have labelled it response because the behaviour is a response to the offence of the other person. Thus, with “offence” we refer to the other person's behaviour and with “response” we refer to the participant's own behaviour (in reaction to this other person's behaviour). Participants’ emotional “response” to the offence is not referred to as “response” but is labelled “emotions after the offense”.

⁵ Because the difference in severity approached significance, which might explain some results (e.g., vengeful responders ruminating more than angry responders), we nonetheless repeated the analyses of variancess and t-tests with severity as a covariate. This yielded the same conclusions except for the following result: The differences in contempt, F(1, 235) = 3.42, p = .066, and forgiveness, F(1, 235) = 2.22, p = .138, became not significant.

⁶ Degrees of freedom are adjusted for unequal variances. This is done for all t-tests with unequal variances between conditions.

⁷ See Footnote 4.

⁸ We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.