The pleasure of revenge: retaliatory aggression arises from a neural imbalance toward reward.
Most of daily life hums along peacefully but provocations tip the balance toward aggression. Negative feelings are often invoked to explain why people lash out after an insult. Yet people might retaliate because provocation makes aggression hedonically rewarding. To test this alternative hypothesis, 69 participants underwent functional neuroimaging while they completed a behavioral aggression task that repeatedly manipulated whether aggression was preceded by an instance of provocation or not. After provocation, greater activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) (a brain region reliably associated with reward) during aggressive decisions predicted louder noise blasts administered in retaliation. Greater NAcc activation was also associated with participants' history of real-world violence. Functional connectivity between the NAcc and a regulatory region in the lateral prefrontal cortex related to lower retaliatory aggression. These findings suggest that provocation tips the neural balance towards hedonic reward, which fosters retaliatory aggression. Although such pleasure of inflicting pain may promote retaliatory aggression, self-regulatory processes can keep such aggressive urges at bay. Implications for theory and violence reduction are discussed.
['Chester|David S|DS|', 'DeWall|C Nathan|CN|']
D000293:Adolescent D000339:Affect D000374:Aggression D000786:Anger D005260:Female D007839:Functional Laterality D059907:Functional Neuroimaging D006801:Humans D008297:Male D009434:Neural Pathways D009483:Neuropsychological Tests D009622:Noise D009714:Nucleus Accumbens D057181:Pleasure D017397:Prefrontal Cortex D012201:Reward D055815:Young Adult
aggression reward nucleus accumbens lateral prefrontal cortex self-regulation