The Science of Revenge: Understanding and Overcoming Grievances to Raise More Forgiving Kids

Raising Good Humans

Dear Media, Aliza Pressman

Toddler, Sinai, Mount, Doctor, Mother, Science, Dear, Baby, Motherhood, Parenting, Psychology, Pressman, Education, Humans, Seedlings, Kids & Family, Adolescence, Children, Child, Childhood, Parent, Good, Raising, Infant, Media, Aliza

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, I’m joined by James Kimmel Jr. JD, a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and author of The Science of Revenge, to explore what the latest neuroscience tells us about revenge, grievance, and retaliation. We discuss how the brain’s reward system becomes activated in response to perceived harm—often fueling cycles of conflict that begin in childhood. Together, we examine how understanding these mechanisms can help us teach our children to reframe grievances, regulate emotional responses, and move toward forgiveness, both in everyday sibling conflicts and larger social dynamics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
0:10.0	Welcome to Raising Good Humans. I'm Dr. Lisa Pressman, and today we're talking about what the new science of revenge tells us about raising good humans. So today, James Kimmel,
0:25.3	psychiatry lecture at the Yale School of Medicine, an author of the Science of Revenge,
0:30.5	is talking to us about what revenge is. It's an addiction. it's a system that leaves us with cravings the same way
0:42.3	addictive substances do, and how grievances activate the brain's reward system so that we can
0:49.2	teach our kids to reframe and release grievances to help prevent harmful cycles of retaliation.
0:56.8	So we're talking about things like sibling rivalry and school bullies all the way to adults
1:03.0	who murder. So what I wanted to get out of this conversation is how do we handle the kinds of
1:10.7	small grievances that happen
1:13.1	constantly in our household, particularly with our children, siblings, et cetera, and among peers,
1:20.8	how we can model for forgiveness and teach forgiveness as a way to feel better about ourselves while still honoring the reality of
1:31.3	what might have happened, the hurt that was caused, and also figuring out how to keep people safe
1:37.1	without this revenge mentality, because we still need to acknowledge when grievances are something far beyond just,
1:46.3	I don't like how that felt, but actually people are in danger.
1:49.8	Can you talk about what revenge even is?
1:54.6	Like, what is the science of revenge?
1:57.1	Sure. Yeah, that's a great place to start.
2:00.2	And the way to think about it is revenge is this desire that we all have to inflict pain on someone else because we feel that they have inflicted pain on us or violated some sort of a norm that might be in our family or in our, you know, community or our
2:21.6	culture, society, any of those things. So revenge is punishing people for things that we believe
2:29.1	that they've done wrong or that we've imagined that they've done wrong. I guess what is the
2:33.4	problem with, I mean, I think intuitively we know what the problem
2:36.8	with a revenge mindset is, but scientifically what's the problem?
	...

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