In this episode, Kelly Leonard interviews James Kimmel Jr., a clinical professor and author, about his book “The Science of Revenge.” They explore the neuroscience behind revenge, its addictive nature, and how it manifests in real-life scenarios. Kimmel shares compelling stories, including those of mass violence, and discusses the role of mental illness in revenge-seeking behavior. The conversation also delves into the healing power of forgiveness and the societal implications of revenge in the age of social media. Kimmel emphasizes the importance of understanding and addressing revenge as a mental health issue, advocating for forgiveness as a means to break the cycle of violence and promote healing.

When you talk about treating revenge like you would treat addiction, what do you mean? 

“Neurologically speaking, when I say your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs, what we’re able to see as neuroscientists – more than 60 neuroscientists at universities around the world have seen – is that if you give a study participant inside a brain scanner a grievance and an opportunity to retaliate against the person who wronged them and this started out as economic games. For instance, in which people were cheating and economic game scenarios, so there wasn’t any kind of violence or even pseudo violence in those early studies. What we see is that as a person is experiencing this grievance and thinking about retaliating, that it’s activating the same pleasure and reward circuitry of addiction that activates for drugs. In other words, we start thinking about craving and ultimately in some cases executing on revenge desires to make ourselves feel better because the pain of our grievances, which are real or imagined perceptions of humiliation, shame, injustice, unfairness, victimization of any sort, those things are real and very painful. And our brain wants rid of that pain as fast as possible.” 

Your book feels very timely, because we see so many people on social media and in real life who seem hell bent on revenge every day. 

“What you see are people who crave hurting other people and provoking them. And they’re unable to stop that or control that. It makes them feel enormous highs, but they’re temporary, and they need to do it again and again and again. It seems to be habit forming. It seems to be compulsive and uncontrollable. And those are the very things we think about when we think about other addictions, right? It is the standard lay person’s definition of addiction: the inability to resist an urge or a craving despite knowing the negative consequences. And is that not what we witness now day by day in America?” 

And the antidote to revenge is… forgiveness? 

“What we know from similar brain scans that not only looked at revenge seeking but also looked at what happens inside your brain when you forgive. Some amazing, and I mean, truly amazing, like if I could put this in a pill, I would be a multi-billionaire or trillionaire right now. If I could sell you what forgiveness does, because what it does inside your brain is that it actually goes to the pain network that was activated by your grievance, which is an area called the anterior insula. It shuts that down. It actually stops pain. Whereas revenge fantasies and revenge seeking gives you a rapid dopamine hit that doesn’t last long, but it feels good. With forgiveness, it stops pain. I mean, isn’t that what we are all looking for in most of our medications? What’s the drug that will stop the pain, doc? Please give that to me and give it to me now.”