Men, women, and revenge
Revenge is a dish best served cold, says the proverb, but according to this article about some recent research, it’s a dish that women are more likely to pass up. Participants in a study first played a game with people they didn’t know, the purpose of which was basically to establish the reputation of the unknown people as either fair or unfair. Those actors who played the game fairly were perceived by the participants as being not only more fair but more likeable. Then the researchers administered shocks to the participants and to the fair and unfair actors, while monitoring the brain activity in the participants. When a fair actor received a shock, the participants’ brains showed an increase in activity in areas related to the perception of pain; with unfair actors, the increase was smaller in women and non-existent in men. This seems to indicate that the participants felt empathy for the fair actor, but either less empathy or none at all for the unfair actor. According to questionnaires that they filled out afterward, the men felt more of an urge for revenge than the women did. Actually I’m most curious about something mentioned at the end of the article, that what’s going on might be related to the type of punishment involved, and if you were dealing with something like social ostracism, for example, women’s reactions might have been different. It would be kind of interesting if they took people of different religious beliefs and saw how they responded. Would a Buddhist or a Quaker feel more empathy for the people being given painful shocks, no matter how they had behaved in the game, compared to someone whose belief system involves a physical punishment for those who behave badly?
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060118_empathy_revenge.html
