Careful what you wish for: fantasizing about revenge increases justice dissatisfaction in the chronically powerless

Abstract

Victims grappling with transgressions where justice has not been done sometimes resort to fantasizing about revenge. This may particularly be the case among people who are chronically powerless since, by definition, they are often not in a position to get justice when transgressed against. In an experimental design in which all participants (N = 84) recalled a highly hurtful and as yet unresolved transgression, participants wrote down a revenge fantasy (or not). As hypothesised, chronically powerless victims who described a revenge fantasy expressed greater dissatisfaction with the extent to which they had got justice for their transgression. The results suggest that, while people might like the idea of revenge, fantasizing about it can be deleterious for the chronically powerless.