Facing the enemy: Spontaneous facial reactions towards suffering opponents

Abstract

The suffering of an opponent is an important social affective cue that modulates how aggressive interactions progress. To investigate the affective consequences of opponent suffering on a revenge seeking individual, two experiments (total N = 82) recorded facial muscle activity while participants observed the reaction of a provoking opponent to a (retaliatory) sound punishment in a laboratory aggression task.Opponents reacted via prerecorded videos either with facial displays of pain, sadness, or neutrality. Results indicate that participants enjoyed seeing the provocateur suffer: indexed by a coordinated muscle response featuring an increase in zygomaticus major (and orbicularis oculi muscle) activation accompanied by a decrease in corrugator supercilii activation. This positive facial reaction was only shown while a provoking opponent expressed pain. Expressions of sadness, and administration of sound blasts to nonprovoking opponents, did not modulate facial activity. Overall, the results suggest that revenge-seeking individuals enjoy observing the offender suffer, which could represent schadenfreude or satisfaction of having succeeded in the retaliation goal.

Feeling bad about feeling good? how avengers and observers evaluate the hedonic pleasure of taking revenge

“…Future works would benefit from taking our find ings forward and examining the consequences of vengeful pleasure (and displeasure) more comprehensively. For instance, use of a laboratory setting would create an oppor tunity to employ a less direct and more valid assessment of emotional states following revenge (see Mitschke & Eder, 2021).…”