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Topic: RE: virus: The best revenge is choosing your parents well? (Read 483 times) |
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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RE: virus: The best revenge is choosing your parents well?
« on: 2004-07-28 01:59:39 » |
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[Blunderov]I think this is VERY interesting. Brain scanning technology is
daily revealing more details about the nature of our humanity.
Best Regards.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/health/psychology/27reve.html?th
Payback Time: Why Revenge Tastes So Sweet
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: July 27, 2004
A raised eyebrow was all it took.
She waited until a year after the breakup, until after he had proposed to
the other woman - a model, did he mention that? - and the new couple had
begun planning the wedding. That's when she ran into a mutual friend who had
spent a few days staying with her ex.
"And you were, uh, comfortable staying there?" she said to the friend.
What are you talking about? he said.
And then the eyebrow arched, and voilą, suspicions about her former
boyfriend's sexual orientation were loosed.
"Yes, I'm a Scorpio, so I'm un peu vindictive," said the woman, who swore
certain payback if her name appeared in this newspaper.
Vindictive, perhaps, but also fundamentally protective. Revenge may be
frowned upon, viewed as morally destitute, papered over with platitudes
about living well. But the urge to extract a pound of flesh, researchers
find, is primed in the genes.
Acts of personal vengeance reflect a biologically rooted sense of justice,
they say, that functions in the brain something like appetite. Alternately
voracious and manageable, it can inspire socially beneficial acts of
retaliation and punishment as well as damaging ones. The emerging picture
helps explain why many people who think they are above taking revenge find
themselves doing nasty, despicable things, and how unconscious biases
pervert what is at bottom a socially functional instinct.
"The best way to understand revenge is not as some disease or moral failing
or crime but as a deeply human and sometimes very functional behavior," said
Dr. Michael McCullough, a psychologist at the University of Miami. "Revenge
can be a very good deterrent to bad behavior, and bring feelings of
completeness and fulfillment."
Retaliatory acts, anthropologists have long argued, help keep people in line
where formal laws or enforcement do not exist. Before Clint Eastwood and
Arnold Schwarzenegger, there was Alexander Hamilton, whose fatal duel with
Aaron Burr was commemorated this month on the banks of the Hudson River.
Recent research has shown that stable communities depend on people who have
"an intrinsic taste for punishing others who violate a community's norms,"
said Dr. Joseph Henrich, an anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta.
In one experimental investing game involving four players, for example,
people pay to punish others who contribute meager amounts to the shared
investment pool. In another, a one-on-one exercise in sharing a sum of
money, people often reject any offer from a partner that is not split 50-50
or close to it, denying both players a payoff. The participants are
typically strangers who will not see each other again, Dr. Henrich said, so
they are not penalizing others to develop an equitable relationship in the
future. They are retaliating to enforce the rules that hold the game - and,
theoretically, the community - together.
Using brain-wave technology, Dr. Eddie Harmon-Jones, a neuroscientist at the
University of Wisconsin, has found that when people are insulted, they show
a burst of activity in the left prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that
is also active when people prepare to satisfy hunger and some cravings. This
increased activity, Dr. Harmon-Jones said, seems to reflect not the
sensation of being angry so much as the preparation to express it, the
readiness to hit back.
The expression itself is all pleasure. In one recent experiment,
psychologists demonstrated that students who were ridiculed were far less
likely to avenge themselves on an offensive peer if they had been given a
bogus "mood-freezing pill," which they were told blocked the experience of
pleasure.
"We've shown many times that expressing anger often escalates and leads to
more aggression," said Dr. Brad Bushman, a psychologist at the University of
Michigan who conducted the study, "but people express it for the same reason
they eat chocolate."
Savoring the taste can be satisfying enough. When Kurt Raedle, 40, a
salesman in Kansas City, Mo., had a new leather jacket stolen from a party,
he fantasized about getting his hands on the thief. A month later, a friend
spotted the rascal wearing the jacket at a bar and helped Mr. Raedle track
him down. Mr. Raedle said he telephoned him. "He was guilty, and he wanted
to mail the jacket to me, but I said no. I wanted him to return it, in
person, to my parents' house. I wanted him to face the parents of someone
he'd stolen from."
The penalty: a half-hour discourse on morals and life lessons from Mr.
Raedle's father, all 6 feet 4 inches and 250 pounds of him.
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rhinoceros
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My point is ...
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RE: virus: The best revenge is choosing your parents well?
« Reply #1 on: 2004-07-28 07:59:07 » |
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[Blunderov]I think this is VERY interesting. Brain scanning technology is daily revealing more details about the nature of our humanity.
Best Regards.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/health/psychology/27reve.html?th
Payback Time: Why Revenge Tastes So Sweet
[rhinoceros] Very interesting indeed. Especially the following 3 points:
<quote 1>
Retaliatory acts, anthropologists have long argued, help keep people in line where formal laws or enforcement do not exist. Before Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger, there was Alexander Hamilton [...] Recent research has shown that stable communities depend on people who have "an intrinsic taste for punishing others who violate a community's norms," said Dr. Joseph Henrich, an anthropologist at Emory University in Atlanta.
<end quote 1>
<quote 2>
Using brain-wave technology, Dr. Eddie Harmon-Jones, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, has found that when people are insulted, they show a burst of activity in the left prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is also active when people prepare to satisfy hunger and some cravings. This increased activity, Dr. Harmon-Jones said, seems to reflect not the sensation of being angry so much as the preparation to express it, the readiness to hit back.
<end quote 2>
<quote 3>
"We've shown many times that expressing anger often escalates and leads to more aggression," said Dr. Brad Bushman, a psychologist at the University of Michigan who conducted the study, "but people express it for the same reason they eat chocolate."
<end quote 3>
[rhnoceros] Here is my quiz of the day for the virians who are good at languages:
"bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay"
What does it mean?
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Blunderov
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Posts: 3160
Reputation: 8.90
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
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RE: virus: The best revenge is choosing your parents well?
« Reply #2 on: 2004-07-28 11:47:21 » |
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[rhnoceros] Here is my quiz of the day for the virians who are good at
languages:
"bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay"
What does it mean?
[Blunderov] The Rhino has rumbled my true identity seemingly. The phrase is
the Klingon translation of "Revenge is a dish best served cold".
Outer space is very cold.
You have been warned.
Best Regards
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