This study investigated reported goals involved in, and emotional outcomes resulting from, the process of enacting revenge activities against interpersonal relationship partners. Participants (N = 152) responded to questionnaires in which they described activities used to express revenge against a relational partner, the importance of several goals relevant to their retaliatory expressions, and the types of emotional outcomes they experienced upon reflecting on their activities. Results indicate that reported revenge activities are distinguished by goals reflecting an overarching desire to dominate targets. Although respondents reported experiencing anger, fearful anxiety, positivity, and remorse after enacting revenge, remorse was particularly strong following the initiation of new relationships, defaming the target's reputation, and removing the target's personal resources. KEY WORDS: emotions • goals • retaliation • revenge • vengeancePhilosophers, religious leaders, journalists, and scholars have historically attempted to understand revenge, or harmful acts enacted in return for a perceived wrong, by addressing at least one of three fundamental issues: Why do people want revenge, how do they express it, and what happens after they act? To date, however, scholars have provided us with only untested ideas about why and how revenge occurs. This study addresses these issues by examining reports of the cognitive, behavioral, and Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

Two independently conducted studies investigate the relations between jealousy‐related emotions and communicative responses. In Study 1, participants provided open‐ended accounts of specific jealousy episodes, from which descriptions of jealous communication were coded. Study 2 examined whether people tend to experience jealousy‐related emotion and use communicative responses to jealousy in systematic and related ways. Across both studies, fear and anger were central to the experience of jealousy. Various combinations of emotion predicted the different communicative responses to jealousy. For example, violent communication was predicted by high levels of hostility and low levels of guilt, while communication with the rival was predicted by high levels of passion and hostility. These results suggest that people are likely to express jealousy differently depending on the specific emotions they experience.

This study focused on the emotional and behavioral responses experienced and expressed by targets of jealousy expressions. Participants (N=226) reported their perceived emotion intensity and likelihood that they would respond with specific messages in response to romantic jealousy expressions. The results showed that targets of romantic jealousy expressions responded with both positive and negative emotions and messages, experienced positive emotions most intensely in response to positive communication, negative affect expression, and suspicious behavior, experienced negative emotions most intensely to violence, negative communication, suspicious behavior, and manipulation attempts, responded with integrative behavior in a variety of conditions, acted most aggressively when faced with violent expressions, and that the valence of targets' emotions predicted the direction of their responses.

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