The Good, the Bad, and the Vengeful: Evaluations of Standing up for Oneself versus Having Another’s Back

Bystander evaluations are a relatively unexplored area of retaliation, yet they are crucial to the reputations through which people navigate the social world. Further, though generally deriding harm, people are often forced to contend with it. By examining how people evaluate retaliation—or the choice not to retaliate—on behalf of self, friend, or stranger in various circumstances, we observed several interconnected results. We found that retaliation was favored when open and visible to offender and onlookers and also commensurate with the original offense and condemned when considered surreptitious and harsh. In addition, the more retaliation was endorsed, the more highly people rated retaliation for allies (friends) over self- and third-party retaliation. Conversely, in scenarios where retaliation was regarded more negatively, people judged abstaining from retaliation for oneself and others with greater approval. Notably, harsh retaliation—while judged negatively—produced both a deterrence effect and even suggested potential for future helping behavior. In conjunction with these findings, we predicted and found that loyalty is an important component in the mechanism underlying the evaluation of retaliation. Overall, the current studies suggest that retaliation may be the particular domain of allies—differing qualitatively from third-party retaliation—and is not a form of straightforward assistance.