Do wronged and outraged people displace their revenge against innocent third parties?
Yes, but it depends on how similar the third parties are to the person who committed the injustice. Three experiments:
The first involved hypothetical scenarios; the second had subjects recall a time they had felt wronged and then speculate about how they would feel if they had a chance get revenge on various third parties.
In the third experiment, real-life victims could choose to exact revenge on innocent, real third parties. Students were manipulated into believing that their partners in a puzzle-solving test had decided not to share a prize of raffle tickets for a restaurant gift card. Before taking the test, the students had watched a video in which their partner—later their nemesis—either conversed with or ignored two other students who were dressed similarly or dissimilarly to the malfeasant partner. The wronged students could choose to do nothing or pursue vengeance by forcing these other students to view unpleasant images.
Across all experiments, avengers reported higher feelings of justice-related satisfaction against more closely tied people.
The Scientific American article and the actual study.
The experiments are somewhat small N so caution. But I can believe the result.
I am very intrigued by outrage and injustice as a motive for taking action, including violence. I think it is understudied, but perhaps it is not and readers can suggest some social science I should read. Suggestions?
18 Responses
It always puzzles me that Americans, of all the world’s peoples, have a hard time getting their heads around this. See:
http://www.calhum.org/files/uploads/program_related/TD-Thomas-Paine-Common-Sense.pdf
Specifically the paragraph at the bottom of p.90 and going over to p. 91. Yep. That covers it. Do we really need more data then our own revolution to support Paine’s assertions? This is a fine example of Tukey’s Inter-Occular Trauma Test (i.e. the results hit you right between the eyes).
Do wronged & outraged people displace their revenge against innocent third parties? Intriguing.
http://t.co/mOGxVJ4vnS
Do wronged and outraged people displace their revenge against innocent third parties? http://t.co/gLXsWuIAnu
Unjust justice http://t.co/SazcosGQdr
RT @cblatts: The victims of injustice exact vengeance on people similar to their aggressor http://t.co/OWXZNqFavE
Unjust justice: Do wronged and outraged people displace their revenge against innocent third parties? Yes, but… http://t.co/lvZugcybHC
RT @cblatts: The victims of injustice exact vengeance on people similar to their aggressor http://t.co/OWXZNqFavE
RT @cblatts: The victims of injustice exact vengeance on people similar to their aggressor http://t.co/OWXZNqFavE
@cblatts https://t.co/o4mEPZIst1 and http://t.co/SgLU8974ve
RT @cblatts: The victims of injustice exact vengeance on people similar to their aggressor http://t.co/OWXZNqFavE
RT @cblatts: The victims of injustice exact vengeance on people similar to their aggressor http://t.co/OWXZNqFavE
The victims of injustice exact vengeance on people similar to their aggressor http://t.co/OWXZNqFavE
Self-promotion: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2275173
@cblatts Victims perceive members of the [perpetrator] group as “blameworthy” and linked to
the events through categorization processes.
@cblatts Lickel et al. 2006 Vicarious retribution, Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 372–390.
RT @cblatts: Unjust justice http://t.co/A8Iya841Ge
.@cblatts have you read the “culture of honor” stuff about aggression and perceived insult among Southerners? http://t.co/ODIg4hQi7K
RT @cblatts: Unjust justice http://t.co/A8Iya841Ge