When and Why Taking Revenge Enables Reconciliation

Do you remember the last time somebody treated you unfairly? How did you feel and what did you think after the person had taken advantage of you? If you felt angry and ruminated about the unfairness for quite a while, you reacted as many people do after being victimized. In addition to these emotional and cognitive reactions, some people feel the inclination to get back at the person who harmed them. But why exactly do (some) people feel the urge to take revenge? What do victims of injustice hope to achieve when punishing the offender?

Decades of psychological research suggest two possible answers to this question. Vengeful desires might result because being treated unfairly makes victims feel vulnerable and weak. Getting back at the offender may then be viewed as a victim's attempt to cope with this unpleasant state by restoring their sense of status and power. In other words, taking revenge could be a means to feel strong and respected again after being victimized.

A second explanation for vengeful desires could be that victims morally condemn the offender's behavior and want to change the offender's attitude towards the wrongdoing. Put differently, victims of injustice eventually want to elicit a "moral change" in the offender, and taking revenge is an attempt to achieve this goal.

Our studies scrutinized these two explanations. For example, we asked participants to recall a situation from their lives in which they were treated unfairly. We then measured how strong and respected they felt after they got back at the offender ("empowerment") and how much of a moral change they perceived in the offender ("moral change"). In addition, we asked our participants to indicate how willing they were to reconcile with the offender and how satisfied they were with how the conflict had been resolved. The two big results were these:

  • Both the victims' sense of empowerment and their perception of a moral change in the offender were positively related to victims' justice-related satisfaction.
  • But, only perceived moral change (not empowerment) was positively related to victims' willingness to reconcile with the offender.

In other studies, we described different unfair situations to participants, and then asked them to imagine taking revenge on the offender. Then we varied the communication between the victim and the offender following the vengeful reaction in two parts. In part one of the communication, half of the participants read that the offender respects them and sees them as competent, while the other half did not receive such an empowerment message. In part two of the communication between the two parties, the offender either communicated that they understood that what they did was wrong and that they would not do it again, or the offender did not communicate such a moral change. We wanted to know: What would be the communication aspects that contribute most to victims' willingness to reconcile with the offender and to victims' satisfaction with how the conflict was resolved?

Our results showed that both the empowerment message (the message communicating that the offender respects the victim and perceives them as competent) and the moral change message (the message conveying that the offender understands that what they did was wrong and that they won't do it again) had positive effects in the sense that they increased victims' willingness to reconcile with the offender and their satisfaction. However, the positive effects of the moral change message were stronger than the effects of the empowerment message.

Thus, the nature of communication after the transgression is important for reconciliation and victims' satisfaction. Our results suggest that to break the self-perpetuating cycle of aggression between offenders and victims, it is crucial that offenders communicate some understanding of the wrongfulness of their actions—a mere restoration of the victims' power and status seems to be not enough.


For Further Reading

Fischer, M., Twardawski, M., Strelan, P., & Gollwitzer, M. (2022). Victims need more than power: Empowerment and moral change independently predict victims' satisfaction and willingness to reconcile. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000291

Funk, F., McGeer, V., & Gollwitzer, M. (2014). Get the message: Punishment is satisfying if the transgressor responds to its communicative intent. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(8), 986–997. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167214533130

Shnabel, N., & Nadler, A. (2008). A needs-based model of reconciliation: Satisfying the differential emotional needs of victim and perpetrator as a key to promoting reconciliation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(1), 116–132. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.94.1.116


Moritz Fischer is a postdoctoral researcher at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Munich, Germany. He studies how people react to unfairness and unethical conduct.

Mathias Twardawski is a postdoctoral researcher at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Munich, Germany. He studies post-transgression behaviors from different perspectives (i.e., victims, offenders, observers).

Peter Strelan is an associate professor at The University of Adelaide in Adelaide, Australia. His broad research interest lies in the area of forgiveness, with a specific focus on the relation between justice and forgiveness.

Mario Gollwitzer is professor and chair of social psychology at the Department of Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany. His research covers topics such as post-transgression responses, victimhood, individual differences in people's sensitivity towards injustice, and science communication/science reception.

People Are Biased Against Victims Who Suffer More

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Well, no, not really. In fact, repeated traumatization makes it harder, not easier, to cope with renewed adversity. Despite this, people often wrongly apply the 'practice makes perfect' mantra to coping with adversity. We call this the habituation fallacy: when it comes to human suffering, the idea that people get habituated to pain is usually wrong, yet many people believe in it.

Although moderate trauma might indeed be linked to more resilience compared to no adversity, the evidence is clear: repeated, severe trauma reduces one's ability to cope. The second loss of a child can be worse than the first, the third violent attack can be more traumatizing than the second, and so on.

In humanitarian emergencies, the habituation fallacy leads potential donors to believe that those with a history of prior suffering have acquired better coping mechanisms and that they, therefore, suffer less from new trauma. This reduces willingness to help victims of repeated misfortune. When potential donors assume that there is not much human agony and suffering to relieve, they see little need to act.

We demonstrated the harmful effects of the habituation fallacy in six studies using a mix of methods to chart responses to a range of fictitious and real-life disasters. For example, in one study participants were asked to indicate how much they thought victims of different disasters were suffering, while we varied what we told participants about the previous victimizations the fictional characters had endured. Consistently, a sizeable majority of participants reported thinking that first-time victims would suffer more than victims who already had a history of surviving previous disasters. In another study, we saw that this belief also reduced willingness to donate money to help them. 

Widespread belief in the habituation fallacy can help explain why emergencies in regions that have previously been relatively prosperous and stable such as Ukraine trigger greater altruism than those with a long history of conflict such as Afghanistan: first-time victims are assumed to suffer more, and they are therefore helped more.

Donors' decisions are of course affected by many things, for example, compassion fatigue or ingroup bias. Alternative explanations in our studies were ruled out by controlling for these factors, giving confidence that effects were indeed attributable to the habituation fallacy. Our studies showed how the habituation fallacy affects decisions to help people of different races and nationalities. The habituation fallacy was important for explaining donors' decisions about helping members of other ethnic groups. 

Knowing about the habituation fallacy might enable donors to be more conscious of their biases and resist them. After all, unless we are conscious of the forces that affect our behavioral choices, it is harder to make different choices. In the context of humanitarian disaster relief, awareness of the habituation fallacy could help reduce donor discrimination against victims who are assumed not to suffer much, but who in fact suffer greatly.


For Further Reading

Zagefka, H. (2022). The habituation fallacy: Disaster victims who are repeatedly victimized are assumed to suffer less, and they are helped less. European Journal of Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2843


Hanna Zagefka is Professor of Social Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research focuses on intergroup processes, especially intergroup helping.