Chester David S, DeWall C Nathan
Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia.
Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Richmond, Virginia.
Aggress Behav. 2018 May;44(3):235-245. doi: 10.1002/ab.21746. Epub 2017 Dec 19.
People differ in how much they seek retribution for interpersonal insults, slights, rejections, and other antagonistic actions. Identifying individuals who are most prone towards such revenge-seeking is a theoretically-informative and potentially violence-reducing endeavor. However, we have yet to understand the extent to which revenge-seeking individuals exhibit specific features of aggressiveness, impulsivity, and what motivates their hunt for retribution. Toward this end, we conducted three studies (total N = 673), in which revenge-seeking was measured alongside these other constructs. Analyses repeatedly demonstrated that revenge-seeking was associated with greater physical (but not verbal) aggressiveness, anger, and hostility. Revenge-seeking's link to physical aggression was partially accounted for by impulses toward enjoying aggression and the tendency to use aggression to improve mood. Dominance analyses revealed that sadism explained the most variance in revenge-seeking. Revenge-seeking was associated with greater impulsive responses to negative and positive affect, as well as greater premeditation of behavior. These findings paint a picture of revenge-seekers as physically aggressive curators of anger, whose retributive acts are performed with planned malice and motivated by the act's entertaining and therapeutic qualities.
人们在对人际侮辱、轻视、拒绝及其他敌对行为寻求报复的程度上存在差异。识别出最倾向于寻求此类报复的个体是一项具有理论指导意义且可能减少暴力的工作。然而，我们尚未了解寻求报复的个体在多大程度上表现出攻击性、冲动性的特定特征，以及是什么驱使他们寻求报复。为此，我们进行了三项研究（总样本量N = 673），在这些研究中，我们对寻求报复以及其他相关构念进行了测量。分析结果反复表明，寻求报复与更强的身体攻击性（而非言语攻击性）、愤怒和敌意相关。寻求报复与身体攻击之间的联系部分可由享受攻击的冲动以及用攻击来改善情绪的倾向来解释。优势分析表明，施虐倾向在寻求报复方面解释的变异量最大。寻求报复与对消极和积极情绪的更强冲动反应以及更强的行为预谋有关。这些发现描绘出寻求报复者是充满愤怒的身体攻击者，他们的报复行为是出于恶意预谋，且受行为的娱乐性和治疗性特质所驱使。
