The Psychology of Revenge and Deterrence

68 The Scholar “Blunt Not the Heart, Enrage It” The Psychology of Revenge and Deterrence Rose McDermott, PhD | Anthony C. Lopez, PhD | Peter K. Hatemi, PhD Texas National Security Review: Volume 1, Issue 1 (December 2017) Print: ISSN 2576-1021 Online: ISSN 2576-1153 69 Malcolm Dispute it like a man. Macduff I shall do so; But I must also feel it as a man: I cannot but remember such things were, That were most precious to me. — Did heaven look on, And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff, They were all struck for thee! naught that I am, Not for their own demerits, but for mine, Fell slaughter on their souls: heaven rest them now! Malcolm Be this the whetstone of your sword. Let grief Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it. - Macbeth, William Shakespeare Why is the instinct for vengeance so strong the threat of future exploitation. even when it is clear that widespread death and As long as humans have lived and competed destruction would be a much more likely outcome in groups, the question of deterring threats from than any kind of “victory”? In the event of a nuclear one’s adversaries has been of central importance. war, why is second-strike retaliation so certain Humanity’s progression from living in small hunter- when it may gain nothing of social or material value? gatherer tribes where everyone knew one another We believe these things because humans share a to nation-states with millions of people has, in universal thirst for retaliation in the face of threat many cases, magnified the stakes of the challenge and in the wake of loss, no matter what classical rather than altered its fundamental dynamics. economists may say to the contrary about how For all of human history, people have had to people “should” behave. Indeed, the psychology of deal with challenges to their physical security revenge and the hatred on which it rests make a and that of their family and friends. Aggression seemingly irrational second strike entirely credible. as an adaptation for conflict resolution has been We can apply this analysis to nuclear weapons, extensively studied in primates1 and in humans.2 but the basic drive is no different than the one What has broadly been labeled “retaliatory that makes most people want to kill anyone who aggression” (most often immediate but also threatens their child, or to hurt a cheating spouse. delayed) is one of the most zoologically common, The instinct for revenge is universal, automatic, well-recognized, and well-studied behavioral and immediate. It also serves a function: to deter responses for dealing with threats and challenges.3 1 James Silverberg and J. Patrick Gray, Aggression and Peacefulness in Humans and Other Primates (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1996). 2 Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, Homicide (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1988); Aaron Sell, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides, “Formidability and the Logic of Human Anger,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 35 (September 2009): 15073—78. 3 John Archer, The Behavioural Biology of Aggression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); J. Martin Ramirez and Jose M. Andreu, “Aggression’s Typologies,” International Review of Social Psychology 16, no. 3 (2003): 125-41. 70 The Scholar Why not then also recognize that “revenge” the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, specifically is located within the evolutionary logic “for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed of retaliatory aggression more broadly? Indeed, we about Communism. We can’t restrain him find that it evolved because of its ability to solve when he’s angry — and he has his hand the recurrent challenge of deterrence, which has on the nuclear button” — and Ho Chi Minh existed throughout the human experience and has himself will be in Paris in two days begging clear implications for reproductive fitness.4 for peace.7 How can we know this? Scholars of human behavior often begin with our closest evolutionary While this strategy did not appear to work for cousins — chimpanzees and bonobos — and look Nixon, he believed that it would. As with Thomas for contrasts and parallels between these species Schelling’s threat that leaves something to chance, and our own. Primate research has revealed that or his notion of the rationality of irrationality,8 retaliatory aggression is a trait we undeniably Nixon believed that creating a reputation for share with non-human primates. For example, both disproportionate response would advantage his chimpanzees and bonobos exhibit propensities play against an adversary by encouraging it to back toward individual and group-level retaliation, down in the face of threat. suggesting that the tendency toward retaliatory Although scholars have developed an aggression dates at least to our most recent understanding of the strategic function of common ancestor approximately 5 to 7 million deterrence, we have a poor understanding of the years ago.5 In other words, retaliatory aggression psychological underpinnings of deterrence as well in humans can be at least partly explained as a as the conditions under which deterrence is likely component of an evolved psychology we share to succeed or fail. with our primate ancestors.6 Classic theories of deterrence emerged in the Conventionally, we say that deterrence is wake of the nuclear revolution and required that successful when the threat of unacceptable costs for deterrence to be stable, both actors had to prevents an adversary from taking some undesired commit to an otherwise seemingly irrational course course of action. When effective, deterrence can of action: nuclear retaliation in response to a first achieve policy goals on the cheap and can mitigate strike.9 Such a commitment is awkward within a the potential for unwelcome blowback. Failures rationalist framework because, as many theorists of deterrence, however, can lead policymakers have pointed out, a second-strike attack cannot to throw good money after bad and to engage in undo or mitigate the apocalyptic damage delivered reckless brinkmanship. in a first strike.10 Despite the reluctance with One of the best examples comes from Richard which rational actors should commit to nuclear Nixon, who used such logic to seek an end to U.S. retaliation, history is replete with policymakers who military involvement in Vietnam. One day, walking have credibly and sometimes eagerly committed to along a fog-shrouded beach in California, he told just this course of action. Where homo economicus Bob Haldeman, his chief of staff: demands ambivalence at best, homo sapiens prove eager and ready. I call it the Madman theory, Bob. I want the We argue that the human psychology of revenge North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached explains why and when policymakers readily commit the point where I might do anything to stop to otherwise apparently “irrational” retaliation. 4 Michael E. McCullough, Robert Kurzban, and Benjamin A. Tabak, “Cognitive Systems for Revenge and Forgiveness,” The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36, no. 1 (2013): 1-15. 5 Christopher Boehm, “Retaliatory Violence in Human Prehistory,” British Journal of Criminology 51, no. 3 (May 2011): 518-34. 6 Joseph H. Manson and Richard W. Wrangham, “Intergroup Aggression in Chimpanzees and Humans,” Current Anthropology 32, no. 4 (1991): 369- 90; Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Richard W. Wrangham and Luke Glowacki, “Intergroup Aggression in Chimpanzees and War in Nomadic Hunter-Gatherers: Evaluating the Chimpanzee Model” Human Nature 23, no. 1 (2012): 5-29. 7 H.R. Haldeman with Joseph DiMona, The Ends of Power (New York: Times Books, 1978), 83. 8 Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960). 9 Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974); Glenn Herald Snyder and Paul Diesing, Conflict Among Nations: Bargaining, Decision Making, and System Structure in International Crises (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977); Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict; Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); Frank C. Zagare, “Reconciling Rationality With Deterrence: A Re-Examination of the Logical Foundations of Deterrence Theory,” Journal of Theoretical Politics 16, no. 2 (April 2004); Frank C. Zagare, “Rationality and Deterrence,” World Politics 42, no. 2 (1990). 10 Christopher H. Achen and Duncan Snidal, “Rational Deterrence Theory and Comparative Case Studies,” World Politics 41, no. 2 (January 1989): 143-69; Robert Jervis, “Deterrence Theory Revisited,” World Politics 31, no. 2 (January 1979): 289-324; Robert Jervis, “Rational Deterrence: Theory and Evidence,” World Politics 41, no. 2 (1989): 183-207; Robert Powell, Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 71 Indeed, we suggest that revenge offers the friend, he or she may desire revenge no matter the quintessentially, psychologically rational response consequences. And most people would consider to aggression. Revenge has several psychological someone who stepped back and, before acting, attributes that are relevant for understanding rationally considered the costs associated with deterrence. For example — and perhaps losing the marriage and friendship a bit odd or weak, counterintuitively — revenge is not motivated by even if that might be the more objectively rational the rational expectation of future deterrence. It is strategy. An evolutionary perspective reminds us instead driven by the intrinsic pleasure that one that it is important not to confuse the conscious or expects to experience upon striking back. The “proximate” goals of the actors (revenge) with the psychophysiological basis of this pleasure has been evolutionary or “ultimate” function of the evolved well-studied, and we understand that this internal psychology behind it (deterrence).

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