Imagine that you left your beloved pet with a trusted friend, only to find out that they killed Fido in a terrible way in your absence. A group at the Yale School of Medicine used a scenario like this to record the emotional responses people had to the story. The overwhelming response was to hurt the friend in return, according to a report in Slate written by James Kimmel Jr., J.D., a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine.
In fact, when a group of about 100 psychiatrists was told a version of that story, the most popular punishment they suggested was to lock the offender in a cage with vicious dogs … to be torn to pieces.
That desire to enflict harm is called revenge. From Slate:
Revenge is an act designed to inflict harm on someone because they’ve inflicted harm on us. We could yearn for anything after we’ve been mistreated, like a scoop of ice cream, a nap, or a relaxing massage. But what most of us really want is the other person’s pain—and for them to know that their pain is because of the pain they’ve caused us.
The desire for revenge is the root motivation for almost all forms of human violence. From childhood bullying to intimate partner violence, urban violence, police brutality, mass shootings, violent extremism, genocide, and even war, perpetrators of violence almost always believe they’re victims seeking justice.
Recent neuroscience discoveries reveal a chilling picture: Your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs. Brain imaging studies show that grievances—real or imagined perceptions of injustice, disrespect, betrayal, shame, or victimization—activate the “pain network,” specifically the anterior insula. The brain doesn’t like pain and tries to rebalance itself with pleasure. Pleasure can come from many things, but humans have evolved to feel intense pleasure from hurting the people who hurt us, or their proxies.
In the last 20 years, more than 60 studies around the world have looked at the brain and found that thinking about retaliating after an offense awakens the brain’s pleasure and reward circuitry of addiction.
Revenge triggers parts of the brain associated with craving and habit formation. But to gratify revenge cravings, someone must get hurt. And although we experience pleasure when we get our revenge, the normal cycle of addiction continues and, eventually, the pain returns. This leaves us with a craving for more, potentially creating a long line of injured people in our wake.
According to Kimmel, in understanding our addiction to revenge and the likely outcome of violence, we can seek evidence-based approaches to prevention.
This could include measures such as public health campaigns to warn about the addictive dangers and risks of revenge, and treatments or interventions such as addiction counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy, and medications.
But there is another, “more potent and widely available remedy” that we all have access to right now, Kimmel says. Interestingly, it is a Biblical principal, one Jesus taught us repeatedly: forgiveness.
From Slate:
Researchers conducting fMRI brain studies have discovered that when you simply imagine forgiving a grievance—without even informing the transgressor—you deactivate your brain’s pain network (the anterior insula)—stopping rather than merely covering up the pain of the grievance. You also shut down the nucleus accumbens and dorsal striatum—the brain’s pleasure and reward circuitry—which stops intrusive revenge desires. Finally, you activate your prefrontal cortex, restoring executive function and self-control so you can make decisions that are in your own self-interest.
So, as the Bible teaches, forgiveness is restorative. Kimmel calls forgiveness “a sort of wonder drug that … helps set you free from the wrongs and traumas of the past.”
No doctor, no price tag. Just freedom. As Kimmel concludes, this is scientific evidence supporting the teachings of Jesus. It is also a reminder from a typically secular field that God reveals Himself in the wonder of our beautifully-made bodies, and that He has equipped us to respond to dangers through the power of His Word.
”Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” — Matthew 6:12
