Revenge Actually Is a Dish Best Served Cold

Some people seem to be on an eternal revenge tour. They’ve been slighted in what most people would consider a minor affront, instantly going on the attack. Perhaps you’ve heard of a political figure or celebrity who constantly seeks favorable treatment, but when it’s denied, goes into a vicious social media frenzy. You’re ready to block their posts because you find them so appallingly unpleasant. Rather than have your mood brought down by their nastiness, you’d like to feel uplifted by people whose media feed emphasizes the good in the world.

Revenge and retribution are perfectly natural reactions to actual (not imagined) wrongs. Miraculously, though, some people seem to be able not just to turn the other cheek, but actively accept the wrongdoer’s apologies. What accounts for these differences in emotional reactions?

The Emotional Rewriting of Your History

According to new research by Duke University’s Gabriela Fernández-Miranda and colleagues (2025), the flip side of revenge—forgiveness—can be understood as occurring due to two possible mechanisms. The first is “episodic fading,” in which you forget the details of the event, a process that occurs only if you let forgiveness kick in. In “emotional fading,” you don’t forget the event itself, but you change your interpretation of it in a process known as reappraisal. Long understood as an important feature of coping, the reappraisal process helps you think differently about something that bothers or upsets you.

One important point the Duke U. authors raise is that your memories of past events can be jolted into awareness when you return to the scene in which something happened. Episodic memory, from this perspective, depends on recall of external cues such as location, people, or objects present during an event. Conversely, the emotional aspects of memory incorporate internal context—namely, your thoughts and feelings at the time. You can easily contrast these two mechanisms if you dredge up the events of a social gathering you recently attended. You might picture the people you talked to and what they said, factors involved in episodic memory. Reflecting back on how you felt would depend, instead, on bringing back into awareness your emotional memory.

Testing Memory’s Role in Forgiveness

Across a pilot study and three experiments, the Duke U. researchers asked the following: “Some have argued that when a victim forgives someone who wrongs them, they thereby release them from a moral debt.” The authors divided their online participants (averaging ages in the late 30s) into a forgiveness versus no forgiveness condition and then asked them to recall details of the wrongdoing. Both groups were prompted to write four to six sentences about an event from the past 10 years in which they either forgave or did not forgive the perpetrator. They then rated how “morally wrong” the perpetrator was. Finally, participants completed what’s called the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire (MCQ), which asked not about the details of the event (which would be impossible to validate) but about how well they remembered these details. Here are some sample items; try them out yourself on an event from your own past:

1. To what extent does your memory for this event involve visual details? (1 = little to no; 7 = a lot)
2. To what extent is your memory of the time the event took place clear/distinct? (1 = vague; 7 = clear/distinct)
3. What is the overall tone of your memory? (1 = very negative; 7 = very positive)
4. How intense were your feelings at the time that the event occurred? (1 = not at all intense; 7 = very intense)
5. How clearly do you remember the events that took place immediately BEFORE the event where someone harmed you? (1 = not at all clearly; 7 = very clearly)
6. How clearly do you remember the events that took place immediately AFTER the event where someone harmed you? (1 = not at all clearly; 7 = very clearly)

Items 1, 2, 5, and 6 tested episodic and 3 and 4 tested emotional memory. The findings of the pilot and first experiment showed that, consistent with the emotional fading mechanism, people who forgave the perpetrator recalled the event’s details but experienced emotional reactions that were less intense and less negative.

In the second experimental study, the authors found similar effects when participants were assigned to the condition in which they were the perpetrators, not the victims. Moreover, these effects were specific to their present emotions, not the emotions occurring when the event had just happened. Additionally, returning to the issue of morality, regardless of role, unforgiven events were seen as more morally wrong than forgiven ones. The authors suggest that people retroactively adjust their sense of moral indignation when they forgive a perpetrator, adding further to the benefits of forgiveness.

In the last of the series of studies, Fernández-Miranda et al. added an evaluation of the attitudes toward perpetrators with the “TRIM,” an 18-item scale with specifically-focused revenge questions; examples are:

1. I'll make him/her pay. (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree)
2. I wish that something bad would happen to him/her. (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree)
3. I am living as if he/she doesn't exist, isn't around. (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree)
4. I cut off the relationship with him/her. (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree)
5. Despite what he/she did, I want us to have a positive relationship again. (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree)
6. I have released my anger so I can work on restoring our relationship to health. (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree)

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Again, think about how you would rate these items, which divide into revenge (items 1 and 2), avoidance (items 3 and 4), and benevolence (items 5 and 6).

The findings showed that forgiveness once again played a role in neutralizing the emotions regarding the event, including attitudes toward the perpetrator.

Flipping the Switch on Revenge

This comprehensive set of studies consistently supports the role of forgiveness as an antidote to revenge, as well as shedding light on how this happens. Ruminating over past wrongs, which would theoretically keep episodic fading from happening, isn’t the culprit here. It’s that internal context of your thoughts and feelings that keeps a past wrong spinning around in your brain.

The findings also suggest that people who constantly are on the revenge warpath seem to lack the ability to reappraise. The Duke study didn’t examine individual differences in the propensity to avoid emotional fading, which would require the addition of relevant personality variables such as agreeableness versus antagonism, the ability to empathize, and perhaps even narcissistic vulnerability. It’s well-known that people high in narcissism don’t react well to being crossed and therefore may be immune to emotional fading.

To sum up, it’s much more pleasant and emotionally adaptive to allow your memories of past harms to lose their sting, a process as important to your fulfillment as to the people you’re able to forgive.