Revenge and Conflict: Social and Cognitive Aspects - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 83

4.5 Conclusions

Revenge is a form of counteraggression targeted at someone who previously
attacked us. Revenge is a cultural universal, which has been found in every kind
of human society, all over the world, and the quest for revenge characterizes epics
since the beginning of human history. However, revenge is costly; it is explicitly
discouraged by modern societies in which private justice is legally prohibited. Why
did the Count of Monte Cristo not give up on his revenge? Why is it so important to
take revenge and how did societies manage to discourage this behavior?
In this chapter, we have highlighted the psychological mechanisms of revenge,
showing how rooted such a behavior is in individuals' minds. We have posited
that revenge results from cognitive mechanisms that were fitness enhancing in
those contexts in which avoiding theft, exploitation, and ostracism was essential
to survival and that this function is still in place, as demonstrated by the fact that
we still use revenge. We have explained why revenge is different from retaliation,
in an attempt to bring to light the special character of revenge, its reliance on
psychological mechanisms that rule human behavior, and the resulting difficulty
to turn it off. We have also sketched the epistemic and motivational representations
behind revenge, making explicit the mind-set of the avenger and his or her beliefs
and goals. Given these features of revenge, we have discussed the solutions different
societies found for inhibiting the escalation of violence, thus allowing societies
to control revenge (i.e., only groups that control the escalation of violence could
survive outcompeting the others).
It is difficult to pinpoint the consequences that this tension between a natural
tendency to take revenge at the individual level and the opposite tendency to
deter revenge at the group level produced in the course of human history, but we
would like to highlight two main general effects of it. First, revenge had to be
restrained by societies in order to prevent escalation of social conflicts. This was
done in two main ways: limiting the contexts in which revenge may take place,
thus transforming it into a regulated institution (e.g., Kanun in Albania, Codice
della vendetta barbaricina in Sardinia), or promoting alternative ways of reacting
and developing new kinds of enforcing institutions, like punishment and sanction.
We draw a parallel between the evolution of societies and the development of
enforcing institutions: from being plain systems of revenge and retribution imposed
by the individual, family, or tribe, they turned into more complex societies in which
aggressions are regulated thanks to institutions characterized by a higher concern for
deterrence and rehabilitation (Andrighetto et al. 2012 a). As a deterrent, punishment
serves to dissuade people from aggressions and norm violations, thus reducing
the frequency and likelihood of future offenses. Deterrence theory suggests that
punishment works by modifying the relative costs and benefits of the situation, so
that wrongdoing becomes a less attractive option (Bentham 1962 ; Becker 1968 ).
Unlike revenge, punishment is a reaction intentionally aimed to minimize the
likelihood that the aggressor will repeat the wrong again in the future. This becomes