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Maddenation
The Cost of Revenge & the Dorsal Striatum
This is a cool segment from NPR that examines Revenge and Altruistic Punishment. Turns out, revenge activates the same part of the brain as love and cocaine. (Just another one of those crazy wiring patterns and evolutionary development cases that blows my mind).
Scientists in the article are trying to figure out “Why revenge?” even when exacting revenge often offers no advantage to the revenger. Altruistic punishment is a neat concept - get revenge so as to help society or prevent someone from violating a social norm. As is the case with all cool science, many new and interesting questions arise because of the research.
David • News • 08/27/04 • 3 comments
Comments
Dad • 08/31/04 • 12:09 AM:The “problem” with this entry is it requires too much thought to comment intelligently, so we naturally postpone it until we have more time. I actually read about this in the paper. It’s neat that someone’s studying this, but I think the evolutionary biologists twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain everything based on natural/random/Godless effects when a spiritual approach might make more sense. Having said that, I can’t think of a good reason why revenge is so sweet, except that lots of things we’re not supposed to do feel good.
Patrick • 09/01/04 • 2:19 AM:I think it’s problematic to reduce everything to endorphins and effects that mimic cocaine and a mechanistic view of the human organism. It’s also problematic to ignore chemical and other bodily effects on the “spirit.” I say the main reason we seek revenge is because that guy did us wrong! How dare he!
I think it’s great that scientists are breaking it down, charting the brain waves, etc. But they may be overshooting.
AJ • 09/10/04 • 6:57 PM:Without reading any of the link I’ll throw in a post mostly because I think it’s totally awesome when I post here.
Despite people for some reason loving to worship “celebrities”, it’s probably exactly the “how dare he” answer. We’re all humans and nobody likes to think we’re unequal to other humans. Revenge is to prove the point that you are not entitled to do something to me that others can’t.
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