The pleasure of revenge: retaliatory aggression arises from a neural imbalance toward reward.

ABSTRACT: Most of daily life hums along peacefully but provocations tip the balance toward aggression. Negative feelings are often invoked to explain why people lash out after an insult. Yet people might retaliate because provocation makes aggression hedonically rewarding. To test this alternative hypothesis, 69 participants underwent functional neuroimaging while they completed a behavioral aggression task that repeatedly manipulated whether aggression was preceded by an instance of provocation or not. After provocation, greater activity in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) (a brain region reliably associated with reward) during aggressive decisions predicted louder noise blasts administered in retaliation. Greater NAcc activation was also associated with participants' history of real-world violence. Fu

SUBMITTER: Chester DS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4927037 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature