Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T09:27:16.536Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 5 - Understanding Youths’ Retaliatory Experiences through the Lens of Moral Agency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2021

By
Holly Recchia  and
Cecilia Wainryb
Edited by
Holly Recchia  and
Cecilia Wainryb
Holly Recchia
Affiliation:
Concordia University, Montréal
Cecilia Wainryb
Affiliation:
University of Utah
Get access

Summary

In this chapter, we consider how youth make sense of their own retaliatory goals and actions in the aftermath of being harmed, and we elaborate on the implications of their meaning-making for processes of moral development and behavior. We begin by describing how youths’ experiences of revenge are distinct from other forms of harmdoing, and how these unique features of revenge may inform the meanings that they construct from their retaliatory desires and actions. Next, we describe age-related changes in these constructive processes, and discuss how youths’ histories of interactions in their social milieu may undergird their constructions of meaning about revenge. We conclude by articulating implications of our analyses for intervening with children and adolescents surrounding issues of revenge.

Keywords

RevengeMoral AgencyMoral developmentPeer conflictNarrativeMeaning-makingJusticeHarmExposure to Violence
Type
Chapter
Information
Revenge across Childhood and Adolescence , pp. 100 - 126
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allwood, M. A., & Bell, D. J. (2008). A preliminary examination of emotional and cognitive mediators in the relations between violence exposure and violent behaviors in youth. Journal of Community Psychology, 36(8), 989–1007. doi: 10.1002/jcop.20277CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allwood, M. A., Bell, D. J., & Horan, J. (2011). Posttrauma numbing of fear, detachment, and arousal predict delinquent behaviors in early adolescence. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 40(5), 659–667. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2011.597081Google Scholar
Ardila-Rey, A., Killen, M., & Brenick, A. (2009). Moral reasoning in violent contexts: Displaced and non-displaced Colombian children’s evaluations of moral transgressions, retaliation, and reconciliation. Social Development, 18(1), 181–209. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9507.2008.00483.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arsenio, W. F., & Gold, J. (2006). The effects of social injustice and inequality on children’s moral judgments and behavior: Towards a theoretical model. Cognitive Development, 21(4), 388–400. doi: 10.1016/j.cogdev.2006.06.005Google Scholar
Arsenio, W. F., & Lemerise, E. A. (2004). Aggression and moral development: Integrating social information processing and moral domain models. Child Development, 75(4), 987–1002. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00720.xGoogle Scholar
Bandura, A., Barbaranelli, C., Caprara, G. V., & Pastorelli, C. (1996). Mechanisms of moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(2), 364–374. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.364CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, A. (2016). Infants’ unprovoked acts of force toward others. Developmental Science, 19(6), 1049–1057. doi: 10.1111/desc.12342CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dahl, A., & Campos, J. J. (2013). Domain differences in early social interactions. Child Development, 84(3), 817–825. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12002Google Scholar
Dirks, M. A., Dunfield, K. A., & Recchia, H. E. (2018). Prosocial behavior with peers: Intentions, outcomes, and interpersonal adjustment. In Bukowski, W. M., Laursen, B., & Rubin, K. H. (Eds.), Handbook of peer interactions, relationships, and groups (pp. 243–264). New York: The Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Dunn, J. (1988). The beginnings of social understanding. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Elster, J. (1990). Norms of revenge. Ethics, 100(4), 862–885. doi: 10.1086/293238CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feeny, N. C., Zoellner, L. A., Fitzgibbons, L. A., & Foa, E. B. (2000). Exploring the roles of emotional numbing, depression, and dissociation in PTSD. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 13(3), 489–498. doi: 10.1023/A:1007789409330CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frey, K. S., Strong, Z. H., Onyewuenyi, A. C., Pearson, C. R., & Eagan, B. R. (2020). Third‐party intervention in peer victimization: Self‐evaluative emotions and appraisals of a diverse adolescent sample. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 30, 633–650. doi: 10.1111/jora.12548Google Scholar
Frijda, N. H. (1994). The lex talionis: On vengeance. In van Goozen, S. H. M., Van De Poll, N. E., & Sergeant, J. A. (Eds.), Emotions: Essays on emotion theory (pp. 263–289). Hillside, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Gable, P. A., Poole, B. D., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2015). Anger perceptually and conceptually narrows cognitive scope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 163–174. doi: 10.1037/a0039226Google Scholar
Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., Bloom, P., & Mahajan, N. (2011). How infants and toddlers react to antisocial others. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(50), 19931–19936. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1110306108Google Scholar
Jacobs, B. A. (2004). A typology of street criminal retaliation. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 41(3), 295–323. doi: 10.1177/0022427803262058CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kedar, R. D. (2013). Reciprocity in morality and law. The Law & Ethics of Human Rights, 6(2), 201–227. doi: 10.1515/1938-2545.1073CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kenward, B., & Östh, T. (2015). Five-year-olds punish antisocial adults. Aggressive Behavior, 41(5), 413–420. doi: 10.1002/ab.21568CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kerig, P. K., Bennett, D. C., Chaplo, S. D., Modrowski, C. A., & McGee, A. B. (2016). Numbing of positive, negative, and general emotions: Associations with trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress, and depressive symptoms among justice-involved youth. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 29(2), 111–119. doi: 10.1002/jts.22087Google Scholar
Kerig, P. K., Bennett, D. C., Thompson, M., & Becker, S. P. (2012). “Nothing really matters”: Emotional numbing as a link between trauma exposure and callousness in delinquent youth. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 25(3), 272–279. doi: 10.1002/jts.21700Google Scholar
Kochanska, G. (2002). Mutually responsive orientation between mothers and their young children: A context for the early development of conscience. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(6), 191–195. doi: 10.1111/1467-8721.00198CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohlberg, L., Levine, C., & Hewer, A. (1983). Moral stages: A current formulation and a response to critics. Basel, Switzerland: S. Karger.Google Scholar
McAuliffe, K., Jordan, J. J., & Warneken, F. (2015). Costly third-party punishment in young children. Cognition, 134, 1–10. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2014.08.013Google Scholar
McMahon, S. D., Felix, E. D., Halpert, J. A., & Petropoulos, L. A. N. (2009). Community violence exposure and aggression among urban adolescents: Testing a cognitive mediator model. Journal of Community Psychology, 37(7), 895–910. doi: 10.1002/jcop.20339Google Scholar
Newcomb, A. F., & Brady, J. E. (1982). Mutuality in boys’ friendship relations. Child Development, 53(2), 392. doi: 10.2307/1128981Google Scholar
Nucci, L., Turiel, E., & Roded, A. D. (2017). Continuities and discontinuities in the development of moral judgments. Human Development, 60(6), 279–341. doi: 10.1159/000484067CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nucci, L., & Weber, E. K. (1995). Social interactions in the home and the development of young children’s conceptions of the personal. Child Development, 66(5), 1438. doi: 10.2307/1131656Google Scholar
Nucci, L. P., & Nucci, M. S. (1982). Children’s responses to moral and social conventional transgressions in free-play settings. Child Development, 53(5), 1337. doi: 10.2307/1129024Google Scholar
Nucci, L. P., & Turiel, E. (1978). Social interactions and the development of social concepts in preschool children. Child Development, 49(2), 400. doi: 10.2307/1128704Google Scholar
Olson, K. R., & Spelke, E. S. (2008). Foundations of cooperation in young children. Cognition, 108(1), 222–231. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2007.12.003CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Orue, I., Bushman, B. J., Calvete, E., Thomaes, S., de Castro, B. O., & Hutteman, R. (2011). Monkey see, monkey do, monkey hurt: Longitudinal effects of exposure to violence on children’s aggressive behavior. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(4), 432–437. doi: 10.1177/1948550610396586Google Scholar
Pasupathi, M., & Wainryb, C. (2010a). Developing moral agency through narrative. Human Development, 53(2), 55–80. doi: 10.1159/000288208Google Scholar
Pasupathi, M., & Wainryb, C. (2010b). On telling the whole story: Facts and interpretations in autobiographical memory narratives from childhood through midadolescence. Developmental Psychology, 46(3), 735–746. doi: 10.1037/a0018897CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pasupathi, M., Wainryb, C., Bourne, S., & Posada, R. (2017). Narrative construction of morality in adolescence among typically developing and violence-exposed youth. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 37(2), 178–198. doi: 10.1177/0276236617733826Google Scholar
Pedersen, W. C., Denson, T. F., Goss, R. J., Vasquez, E. A., Kelley, N. J., & Miller, N. (2011). The impact of rumination on aggressive thoughts, feelings, arousal, and behaviour: Rumination and aggression. British Journal of Social Psychology, 50(2), 281–301. doi: 10.1348/014466610X515696Google Scholar
Phifer, L. W., & Hull, R. (2016). Helping students heal: Observations of trauma-informed practices in the schools. School Mental Health, 8(1), 201–205. doi: 10.1007/s12310–016-9183-2Google Scholar
Posada, R., & Wainryb, C. (2008). Moral development in a violent society: Colombian children’s judgments in the context of survival and revenge. Child Development, 79(4), 882–898. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01165.xGoogle Scholar
Recchia, H. E., & Wainryb, C. (2014). Mother–child conversations about hurting others: Supporting the construction of moral agency through childhood and adolescence. In Wainryb, C. & Recchia, H. (Eds.), Talking about right and wrong: Parent–child conversations as contexts for moral development (pp. 242–269). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Recchia, H. E., Wainryb, C., Bourne, S., & Pasupathi, M. (2015). Children’s and adolescents’ accounts of helping and hurting others: Lessons about the development of moral agency. Child Development, 86(3), 864–876. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12349Google Scholar
Recchia, H. E., Wainryb, C., & Pasupathi, M. (2013). “Two for flinching”: Children’s and adolescents’ narrative accounts of harming their friends and siblings. Child Development, 84(4), 1459–1474. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12059Google Scholar
Recchia, H. E., Wainryb, C., & Pasupathi, M. (2019). “I wanted to hurt her”: Children’s and adolescents’ experiences of desiring and seeking revenge in their own peer conflicts. Social Development, 28(4), 840–853. doi: 10.1111/sode.12370Google Scholar
Recchia, H. E., Wainryb, C., & Posada, R. (2017, April). I wanted to make him pay: Colombian youths’ accounts of their own retaliatory actions. In Children’s and adolescents’ experiences and judgments of revenge: Findings from the U.S., Colombia, and Pakistan. Symposium presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Austin, TX.Google Scholar
Recchia, H. E., Wainryb, C., & Posada, R. (2020). The juxtaposition of revenge and forgiveness in peer conflict experiences of youth exposed to violence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 30, 956–969. doi: 10.1111/jora.12573Google Scholar
Riedl, K., Jensen, K., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2015). Restorative justice in children. Current Biology, 25(13), 1731–1735. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.05.014Google Scholar
Ross, H. S., Filyer, R. E., Lollis, S. P., Perlman, M., & Martin, J. L. (1994). Administering justice in the family. Journal of Family Psychology, 8(3), 254–273. doi: 10.1037/0893-3200.8.3.254Google Scholar
Sharf, A., Kimonis, E. R., & Howard, A. (2014). Negative life events and posttraumatic stress disorder among incarcerated boys with callous-unemotional traits. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 36(3), 401–414. doi: 10.1007/s10862–013-9404-zGoogle Scholar
Shaw, L. A., & Wainryb, C. (2006). When victims don’t cry: Children’s understandings of victimization, compliance, and subversion. Child Development, 77(4), 1050–1062. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00918.xGoogle Scholar
Smetana, J. G., Campione-Barr, N., & Yell, N. (2003). Children’s moral and affective judgments regarding provocation and retaliation. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 49(2), 209–236. doi: 10.1353/mpq.2003.0010Google Scholar
Smetana, J. G., Jambon, M., & Ball, C. (2014). The social domain approach to children’s moral and social judgments. In Killen, M. & Smetana, J. G. (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (2nd ed., pp. 23–45). New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Smith, C. E., Fischer, K. W., & Watson, M. W. (2009). Toward a refined view of aggressive fantasy as a risk factor for aggression: Interaction effects involving cognitive and situational variables. Aggressive Behavior, 35(4), 313–323. doi: 10.1002/ab.20307CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, C. E., & Warneken, F. (2016). Children’s reasoning about distributive and retributive justice across development. Developmental Psychology, 52(4), 613–628. doi: 10.1037/a0040069Google Scholar
Stillwell, A. M., Baumeister, R. F., & Del Priore, R. E. (2008). We’re all victims here: Toward a psychology of revenge. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 30(3), 253–263. doi: 10.1080/01973530802375094Google Scholar
Thompson, R. A. (2012). Whither the preconventional child? Toward a life-span moral development theory. Child Development Perspectives, n/a–n/a. doi: 10.1111/j.1750-8606.2012.00245.xGoogle Scholar
Tremblay, R. E. (2000). The development of aggressive behaviour during childhood: What have we learned in the past century? International Journal of Behavioral Development, 24(2), 129–141. doi: 10.1080/016502500383232CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turiel, E. (2002). The culture of morality: Social development, context, and conflict. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511613500Google Scholar
Velez, G., Hahn, M., Recchia, H., & Wainryb, C. (2020). Rethinking responses to youth rebellion: Recent growth and development of restorative practices in schools. Current Opinion in Psychology, 35, 36–40. doi: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.02.011Google Scholar
Wainryb, C. (2011). “And so they ordered me to kill a person”: Conceptualizing the impacts of child soldiering on the development of moral agency. Human Development, 54(5), 273–300. doi: 10.1159/000331482Google Scholar
Wainryb, C., & Bourne, S. (2016). “And I shot her”: On war, and the creation of inequities in the development of youths’ moral capacities. In Horn, S., Ruck, M., & Liben, L. (Eds.), Equity and justice in development science: Implications for diverse young people, families, and communities (pp. 257–288). Cambridge, MA: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Wainryb, C., Brehl, B. A., & Matwin, S. (2005). Being hurt and hurting others: Children’s narrative accounts and moral judgments of their own interpersonal conflicts. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 70(3), 1–114. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5834.2005.00350.xGoogle Scholar
Wainryb, C., Komolova, M., & Brehl, B. (2014). Children’s narrative accounts and judgments of their own peer-exclusion experiences. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 60(4), 461. doi: 10.13110/merrpalmquar1982.60.4.0461CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wainryb, C., Komolova, M., & Florsheim, P. (2010). How violent youth offenders and typically developing adolescents construct moral agency in narratives about doing harm. In McLean, K. C. & Pasupathi, M. (Eds.), Narrative development in adolescence (pp. 185–206). New York: Springer US. doi: 10.1007/978-0-387-89825-4_10CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wainryb, C., & Pasupathi, M. (2018). I hurt him: From morally relevant actions to moral development, by way of narrative. In Helwig, C. (Ed.), New perspectives on moral development (pp. 105–120). New York: Routledge. www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781315642758/chapters/10.4324/9781315642758-7Google Scholar
Wainryb, C., & Recchia, H. (2014a). Moral lives across cultures: Heterogeneity and conflict. In Killen, M. & Smetana, J. G. (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (2nd ed., pp. 259–278). New York: Psychology Press. doi: 10.4324/9780203581957.ch12Google Scholar
Wainryb, C., & Recchia, H. (2014b). Parent–child conversations as contexts for moral development: Why conversations, and why conversations with parents? In Wainryb, C. & Recchia, H. (Eds.), Talking about right and wrong: Parent–child conversations as contexts for moral development (pp. 3–20). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wainryb, C., & Recchia, H. (2017). Mother–child conversations about children’s moral wrongdoing: A constructivist perspective on moral socialization. In Budwig, N., Turiel, E., & Zelazo, P. (Eds.), New perspectives on human development: Rethinking cognitive, social, and language & communicative development (pp. 182–208). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9781316282755.012Google Scholar
Wainryb, C., & Turiel, E. (1994). Dominance, subordination, and concepts of personal entitlements in cultural contexts. Child Development, 65(6), 1701. doi: 10.2307/1131289Google Scholar
Wentzel, K. R., Filisetti, L., & Looney, L. (2007). Adolescent prosocial behavior: The role of self-processes and contextual cues. Child Development, 78(3), 895–910. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01039.xGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×