Resentment

When the gods gathered for the wedding of Peleus and Thetis—the pair would go on to produce the great Achilles—one divine name was conspicuously absent from the guest list: Eris, goddess of discord. Despite her divine lineage, she was excluded to avoid potential chaos at the nuptials; no one wants discord at a celebration. Eris, however, did not take this omission lightly. Seething with resentment, she devised a plan to disrupt the event. She crafted a golden apple inscribed with the words “To the fairest” and rolled it into the midst of the gathering.

Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, all three legendary beauties, claimed the apple, eventually agreeing to let the matter be decided by a third party: Paris of Troy. Each goddess tried to persuade—really, bribe—Paris to choose her. Aphrodite succeeded. After Paris chose the goddess of love, Aphrodite kept her promise—gods and goddesses didn’t always—and granted Paris the boon as promised: the most beautiful (mortal) woman in the world at that time, one Helen of Sparta, recently married to Menelaus.

We all know what came next.

One could argue that jealousy started the epic war that was to follow, since that was the emotion that spurred Menelaus to action. I mean, I myself did, a few chapters back. Fair enough. Still, one might just as easily blame the emotion that drove Eris to take revenge for the slight she suffered: resentment.

One way that humans are able to sustain their civilizations, from small villages to large nations, is that communities agree to abide by certain norms and rules. For example, nearly every human society that has been studied has a prohibition against murder, though the details vary.

For the purpose of this feel, we can think of these rules as conditionals. The conditional of murder is, IF you commit murder, THEN you will be punished. There are conditionals that run the other way as well, about benefits rather than costs. IF you are a citizen, THEN you may vote. We are surrounded by social contracts, conditionals filled with musts, mays, and their opposites. These social contracts all have a similar form: IF you pay the cost or meet the requirement, THEN you are entitled to the benefit.

Because these rules are so important, humans, as my former mentors Leda Cosmides and John Tooby have shown, are exquisitely good at noticing when there has been a violation: Someone enjoyed a benefit but did not pay the cost or someone did not get a benefit for which they did pay the cost. They termed this ability “cheater detection” and have provided decades of evidence that we humans are experts in it.

The ability to detect cheaters underlies resentment. In classic cases of resentment, people say things such as, “He bought his way into that elite university while I studied for years and still got rejected,” “My ex-spouse is living it up with their new partner using the money I earned during our marriage,” or “Did Hermes lose my wedding invitation or what?”

In two of these complaints, the issue is that someone is getting the benefit—a place at university, unearned wealth—without, in the speaker’s view, having paid the price. Resentment can come from promotions and raises that were unearned—or earned in a way other than work performance. In the third case, Eris clearly met the requirement—she was a goddess and therefore entitled to attend—but did not get the benefit of the invite. All three cases fit the measurement for resentment.

As something of a side note, it’s tempting to link resentment and “fairness,” but I’ve tried to avoid using this word because it can mean many different things to different people in different contexts. If someone gets less than they want for nearly any reason, they’ll often say it’s unfair. I don’t doubt that Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena all argued that the apple should, in fairness, go to them, but it is equally clear that it was vanity more than fairness that was at work. Resentment is better thought of in terms of costs and benefits than fairness.

So that’s the measurement that leads to resentment. A social contract has been violated.

What’s the motivation?

An important clue is that when people feel resentment, they are often motivated to let others know how they feel. Early research on resentment found that in some situations, people who felt resentment, especially the powerless, suppressed their responses. More recent work, however, suggests that the feeling of resentment often leads to criticism and derogatory statements, not always directed at the person who got the benefits but often to the resented person’s family, friends, and allies. In today’s world, people take to social media to point to such (putative) cases, though, as always, it’s important to bear in mind that making such accusations is a lot easier than proving the offense.

Why does the motive to publicize matter when one is resentful? After all, in many cultures, complaining about slights and injustices is often viewed negatively: One can come across as whiny or small-minded.

The reason is that humans use moral attacks to bring people over to their side so that they can win conflicts. When people launch accusations of wrongdoing by others—in this case, the violation of a social contract—they are trying to persuade their audience to take their side. If they advertise that a social contract has been violated, harming them, they can recruit allies to seek compensation.

Another motivation is pure revenge. Eris didn’t want restitution. She wanted revenge. Both revenge and successful moral attacks can deter similar injustices in the future. The next time Zeus and Hera compose the guest list for a fete, one imagines they will take extra care to ensure that Eris is invited. This explains why the emotion often comes with anger: Both emotions are aimed at changing others’ actions in the future.

Much mischief can come from disagreements about what exactly is the social contract: Who is entitled to what. I don’t want to get into politics, but consider the idea that everyone has a right to at least a certain standard of living. If some do not enjoy that standard of living, they might feel resentful about that, leading to accusations of injustice, a desire for revenge, and perhaps violence.

In sum, resentment motivates aggression, often in the form of denigration or a moral attack. By recruiting others to the cause, it might be possible to right the wrong, harm the rival, and deter future instances.

If the Trojan War conveyed a lesson—other than one to do with Greeks bearing gifts—it was that one snubs Eris at one’s peril.