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to others and the social prescriptions against revenge? If revenge is so negative, what
makes it so hard to restrain revenge even in modern societies, in which it is socially
disapproved, culturally neglected, and legally prohibited?
There are two general sorts of reasons why we should be interested in the
question of what motivates people to take revenge. The first reason is a psycho-
logical one. What are the cognitive mechanisms that support a socially discouraged
and condemned behavior and thus ensure its persistence? Understanding revenge
implies to explain why it is so difficult to resist the temptation to take revenge, and
it represents an attempt to explain the desire for revenge that everybody feels and
that triggers small vengeful actions in everyday life (Frank
1988
).
The second reason concerns social policy and punishment institutions. We are
interested not only in explaining the persistence of “cultures of honor” in which
revenge is culturally accepted and even prescribed, but we would like to sketch
a more general hypothesis about the evolutionary path that made possible the
persistence of revenge notwithstanding the risks of feuds, conflicts, and social
disruption.
In this chapter, we start from the assumption that revenge is a social behavior
that creates a conflict of interest between individuals' interests and societal needs,
and we develop a cognitive theory of revenge, with the aim of offering a solution
to this tension between individuals and societies. Our starting point is the following
question: why a behavior that is risky (you can be counterattacked), costly (in terms
of current and future costs), disruptive, and aimed not at deterrence (this can be a
functional effect but it is not necessarily meant by the avenger) but at reducing the
aggressor's power or to make him or her suffer was not selected out by evolution?
Our answer is that revenge, intended as both a desire for revenge and the
action itself, is grounded on and exploits the existence of several psychological
mechanisms that support revenge and make it difficult to get rid of it. On the other
hand, societies tried to modify the behavior, but not the mind-set of the avenger,
thus allowing revenge to survive and prosper. This tension is not resolved and it is
demonstrated by the fact that revenge, as a desire, a behavior, and a set of mental
representations, is still present in contemporary societies.
In this chapter, we start by defining revenge, and we outline its main features also
in comparison with two alternative mechanisms for conflict management: retaliation
and forgiveness. In the third paragraph, we apply cognitive analysis in order to
highlight the relevant sets of beliefs, desires, and intentions behind revenge, and we
discuss the relationship between revenge, punishment, and sanction. In Sect.
4.1
,we
report ethnographic evidence from societies in which revenge is used as a way of
dealing with conflicts, with the aim of describing the institutional characteristics of
revenge and of identifying the main reasons for the aforementioned tension between
individual desires and social prescriptions. Finally, we draw some conclusions
about the role played by revenge in human societies and the supporting cognitive
mechanisms, and we point to open issues that would deserve further investigation.
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