The Importance of Social Context in Vengeance: Personal Aggression Against Oneself Prompts People to Rate Retaliation for Strangers More Favorably Than Retaliation for Friends

Using a novel aggression task followed by vignettes, we explored people's judgments about retaliation when enacted for an ally vs. a third-party stranger. Contrary to previous studies, we found that after completing a provocation task, participants rated stranger retaliation more favorably, especially when there was no delay between the tasks.