Avengers by Nature?

This is about the article written by William Saletan titled, Men Are From Vengeance. In this article Saletan discusses how gender is related to a persons sense of empathy and vengeance, based upon studies and other related polls.

What made this article so interesting is the fact I've never thought of revenge as a gender based characteristic. However, this article goes on to discuss a unique study in which actors played a game. Some actors played fairly while others did not. At the end of the game electric shocks were sent to the actors that played fairly and those who did not. The results were quiet surprising to me. To my surprise unlike women, men's empathetic responses were significantly less when electric shocks were given to those who played unfairly.

Perhaps even more shocking were the results given from a survey by the Washington Post/ABC. The survey asked if murderers deserve the death penalty as a fair punishment for the life they took. I thought surely gender would not play a noticeable factor in this survey, but I was wrong. " A plurality of women rejected this notion; two of every three men endorsed it." As stated by William Saletan, men had significantly more support to this idea.

Although some could argue there isn't enough conclusive evidence to consider empathy a gender-related emotion, this article has left me to question my own way of thinking. I thought my views that it's only fair that a killer should have to pay with his life, was something people would agree with or disagree with, whether they're female of male. But maybe there is more to this sense of revenge, this since of justice?