Men take pleasure from revenge, while women do not. That’s the conclusion of a British study in which researchers used an MRI to examine the brains of men and women as they watched an enemy suffering punishment. In the study, a planted group of “selfish” players cheated the others out of money in a game, and deliberately made themselves seem obnoxious and unlikable.
At the end of the game, the selfish players were subjected to a series of apparent electric shocks, while the study subjects looked on. When a male volunteer saw one of the “bad” players being punished, the primitive reward centers of his brain lit up with pleasure. The scan of his compassion centers, meanwhile, showed no surge of sympathy. When women viewed the villains being shocked, on the other hand, they experienced no pleasure at all. In fact, they felt empathetic.
The results were a surprise for researchers, who expected that women would experience some level of schadenfreude [getting pleasure from the misfortunes of others]. They speculate that there’s an evolutionary advantage in men taking pleasure from others’ pain; it may have enabled alpha males to subdue rivals and rule-breakers without hesitation or guilt. Researcher Tania Singer tells THE NEW YORK TIMES that the study “would seem to indicate there is a predominant role for men in maintaining justice and issuing punishment.”