The equity restoring components of retaliation.

When an individual feels responsible for having caused the suffering of others, he may experience a need to justify his behavior. The harm-doer appears to justify his behavior by devaluing his victim, thus convincing himself that the victim merited his fate. With derogation as a measure of justification, it was hypothesized that a harm-doer will derogate his victim more when the victim is powerless to retaliate than when retaliation from the victim is expected. The obtained significant interaction between the subject's responsibility for harming the victim and his anticipation of being punished appears to support the hypothesis. However, both an opposite and larger effect was obtained for observers, control subjects expecting retaliation by the victim derogated him more than those who did not expect retaliation It may be, then, that the difference between the harm doer retaliation expected and the harm-doer no retaliation expected conditions was not significant. The present study attempts to show that from the harm-doer's point of view, expected retaliation from the victim results in an equitable relationship and that under this condition the harm-doer does not experience the need to justify his harmful act.