Men appear to get greater satisfaction than women when witnessing retribution. Revenge 'more satisfying for men'.
"This investigation would seem to indicate there is a predominant role for men in maintaining justice and issuing punishment, " said Dr Tania Singer.
The New York Times inexplicably calls this Your Brain on Schadenfreude and so apparently did Nature magazine which published Dr. Singer's research. Now, schadenfreude is a German word meaning pleasure derived from the misfortune of others. Misfortune is bad luck. I don't think what the experiments showed is schadenfreude at all and neither does the author. It's more pleasure at seeing rough justice.
First the experimental subjects watched people playing a game in which some cheated (bad people) and others played fair (good people). Then they watched the same people suffering from a painful stimulus.
The empathy circuits lighted up in both men and women when bad things happened to good people. When bad things happened to bad people, the women in the study were still empathic. But not the men. Not only did they show less empathy toward bad people, but the reward center in the left nucleus accumbens lighted up. All that translates as "Serves him right!"
Posted by Jill Fallon at January 26, 2006 2:54 PM | Permalink