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Highly recommended article about "Your Brain on Revenge"; Groundbreaking medical research [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-16
https://slate.com/life/2025/07/drug-brain-addiction-revenge-public-health-death.html
Please read the first six paragraphs. You will be hooked and you will want to read the rest.
I cannot recopy the entire article for those who get blocked by a paywall, but I can give some excerpts:
Bad Brains Your brain on revenge looks a lot like your brain on drugs—and there’s only one twisted way to get your fix. By James Kimmel Jr. July 14, 2025 5:46 AM
Revenge is an act designed to inflict harm on someone because they’ve inflicted harm on us. We could yearn for anything after we’ve been mistreated, like a scoop of ice cream, a nap, or a relaxing massage. But what most of us really want is the other person’s pain—and for them to know that their pain is because of the pain they’ve caused us.
The desire for revenge is the root motivation for almost all forms of human violence. From childhood bullying to intimate partner violence, urban violence, police brutality, mass shootings, violent extremism, genocide, and even war, perpetrators of violence almost always believe they’re victims seeking justice.
Recent neuroscience discoveries reveal a chilling picture: Your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs. Brain imaging studies show that grievances—real or imagined perceptions of injustice, disrespect, betrayal, shame, or victimization—activate the “pain network,” specifically the anterior insula. The brain doesn’t like pain and tries to rebalance itself with pleasure. Pleasure can come from many things, but humans have evolved to feel intense pleasure from hurting the people who hurt us, or their proxies.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/16/2333708/-Highly-recommended-article-about-Your-Brain-on-Revenge-Groundbreaking-medical-research?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
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