Luigui Bleand: Seeing Someone Suffer Won't Ease Your Pain

ROME, ITALY — Someone hurt you. A coworker who made you look bad in front of everyone, a friend who let you down when you needed them most, a neighbour who spoke ill of you behind your back. And somewhere inside, a voice appears: “I hope things go badly for them. I hope they feel what I felt.” You have no reason to be ashamed of that voice; it is human, and it speaks to almost anyone who has been hurt. But it is worth looking at it squarely, without hurrying, and asking it what it is promising us.

I believe that wanting to see someone suffer will not ease your pain; if anything, it makes it worse. The wish promises the opposite: that if the other person suffers too, you will hurt less; that their fall will put things back in their place and you will finally be able to rest. When it hurts, the promise sounds reasonable, and that is why I wanted to look into it. What I found is that, at most, it keeps that promise halfway, and then leaves the load where it was, or heavier.

The temptation has a real root. In 2004, in Science, Dominique de Quervain and his colleagues scanned the brains of 15 men during a trust game. When the other player deliberately betrayed that trust, 12 of the 14 analysed punished that player even though it cost them something too, and while they were deciding, the caudate nucleus, an area linked to reward, became active, more so in those most willing to give up something of their own. The authors read it as the anticipated satisfaction of punishing. There were few of them, all men, and no one measured how they felt afterwards.

What comes after was studied in 2008, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, by Kevin Carlsmith, Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert. They put 48 university students in a group computer game in which a simulated player urged cooperation and then took advantage of the others. Some could punish her at the end; others could not; others only imagined how they would feel if they could. Of the 15 who could, 14 did. With mood measured at the end and ten minutes later, on a 7-point scale, those who could punish averaged 3.52; those who could not, 4.79; and those who only imagined it predicted 4.53. And after ten minutes they were still thinking about her more than those who could not, who were already letting her go. It was a small group, in a lab game, but the paradox the authors point to is easy to see: we believe getting back at someone will make us feel better, and instead it leaves us feeling worse, with that person stuck in our head.

So does it never taste sweet? It is more complicated. In 2017, in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Fade Eadeh, Stephanie Peak and Alan Lambert ran three online experiments with adults in the United States: some read about an act of retaliation against someone who had caused great harm, and others a neutral text. In all three, reading about the retaliation left people in a worse mood, angrier; but when they wrote about it, and in the last one when asked directly, positive and negative feelings appeared at once. Bittersweet, they called it. It was someone else’s revenge, not personal. In 2009, in the same journal, Mario Gollwitzer and Markus Denzler found, with an indirect measure, that the desire for revenge seemed satisfied when the wronged person chose to take revenge and the other person signalled that they understood why. It was a single experiment. And whether the other person understands is precisely what does not depend on you.

With anger, something similar happens: what you feed grows. In 2002, in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Brad Bushman angered 600 university students with very harsh criticism of an essay they had written. Then some let off steam physically while thinking about the person they believed had criticised them; others did the same while thinking about getting fit; and others waited two minutes in silence. The first group ended up angrier: 29.78 against 26.25 for those who did nothing. The effect was small to moderate, but the author put it plainly: doing nothing worked better than venting. In 2008, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Rebecca Ray, Frank Wilhelm and James Gross, in two studies, asked people to recall a recent episode of anger: dwelling on it, compared with looking at it from another angle, brought more anger, more repetitive thoughts and a body more on alert.

And the body notices too. In 2001, in Psychological Science, Charlotte vanOyen Witvliet, Thomas Ludwig and Kelly Vander Laan asked 71 university students to think of one specific person who had hurt them and, in turns, to go over the offence and nurse the grudge, or to picture that person with more understanding. While ruminating and holding the grudge, the anger they reported reached 15.75 on a 0-to-20 scale, against 5.11; their brow tensed more, their heart rate and blood pressure rose more, and part of that arousal was still there a few seconds after they stopped. These were 16-second imagery periods in a lab, and the authors themselves doubt that something so brief would affect health. Even so, the scene says a lot: the person who had hurt them was not even in the room.

In daily life, that wish looks like this. You ask about that person casually, as if it did not matter, hoping someone will say things are going badly for them. In the shower you rehearse the argument and finally tell them what you never said. You tell the story once more, to someone else, and feel all of it again. You wait for news of their fall like someone waiting for rain that never comes. Meanwhile, that person goes on with their day, perhaps without even remembering you, while they occupy your morning, your afternoon and your night. Wishing someone harm keeps your eyes fixed on that person, and while you look over there, you neglect what is yours.

What helps, then? I have learned that the first thing is to bring your attention back to your own life and to look at what happened from a little further away. In 2019, in PLOS ONE, Carmen Peuters and her colleagues asked 156 Belgian students to recall something that had made them angry and then to dwell on it from their own point of view, or to look at it as an outsider who wants the best for everyone would. On a scale of 0 to 6, the anger of those who ruminated stayed the same, from 2.87 to 2.90; that of those who took distance fell from 3.37 to 2.41. It was a one-minute exercise, and the groups did not start at the same level. To that distance I add time and the company of those who are on your side. Forgiveness is another conversation, and we already had it in this diary when I wrote about “Father, forgive them”; here I am talking about something that comes before: no longer waiting for their fall.

That is why I say it to you with affection and with firmness: let go of that wish. Not for that person, who may never know anything about this, but for you. Letting go of it does not change what happened; it changes where you are looking, and whatever happens to that person no longer decides how you wake up. If the “I hope things go badly for them” voice comes back, do not scold yourself for hearing it: it is the wound asking you to take care of it. Go back to what you are building, to your days, to your people. Their fall will not lift you up. Pick yourself up.