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target of revenge because he or she is guilty of the aggression, as witnessed by the
fact that it is possible to take revenge against people that did not take part in the
aggression but who are related to the aggressor, like the aggressor's family or closer
relatives, because they share some common traits. Posner ( 1980 ) views this issue
the other way around: family obligation to retaliate is needed to make the threat of
revenge work as a deterrent.
4.2.2
Forgiveness and Institutionalized Revenge
An alternative hypothesis about the way in which human societies overcame the
costs of revenge posits that forgiveness might represent an evolution of revenge
(McCullough 2008 ; McCullough et al. 2013 ).
The potentially endless increase of the costs of revenge led to the coevolution of
a mechanism for inhibiting it and for developing a forgiveness system (McCullough
et al. 2013 ). This implies a set of motivational changes that orient an individual's
behavior toward signaling the harm one has incurred without taking revenge. In
this view, both revenge and forgiveness serve the same function of increasing
others' regard toward the self, but with quite different methods and results. Revenge
and forgiveness, we argue, have complementary biological functions: We posit
that mechanisms for revenge are designed to deter harms, and that forgiveness
mechanisms are designed to solve problems related to the preservation of valuable
relationships despite the prior imposition of harm (McCullough et al. 2013 ,p.2).
The tight relationship between revenge and suffering has led some scholars to
believe that revenge and forgiveness are complementary mechanisms evolved to
solve recurrent and highly relevant social problems (McCullough et al. 2013 ).
Although different, revenge and forgiveness share at least the same origin: the
perception of a wrong suffered, as opposed to a harm, which leads to the desire
of compensation for the loss. Miceli and Castelfranchi ( 2011 ) propose a cognitive
analysis of forgiveness in which they focus on the benefits for the individual,
stressing the importance of forgiving as a means for overcoming the negative
emotions associated with revenge, like resentment, and for achieving intrapsychic
well-being.
Empirical evidence also shows that forgiveness may promote well-being
(Mauger et al. 1992 ; Salman 2002 ; Subkoviak et al. 1995 ). Empirical research
on forgiveness and mental health has shown the existence of a link between failure
to forgive and indicators of poor mental health such as depression and anxiety
(Karremans et al. 2003 ; Maltby et al. 2001 ). There is also evidence that this
association is more pronounced in close relationships, in which the quality of the
relationship before the transgression is important (Karremans et al. 2003 ).
Revenge is seen as a behavior aimed at changing others' beliefs about the avenger
by deterring further attacks through the imposition of a cost on them:
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