When someone betrays us, humiliates us, abandons us when we need them most, or physically hurts us, even as time passes, often a part of us remains trapped in the past, dwelling on what happened.
From the outside, it might seem like resentment or even obsession. However, most people don’t spend months or years dwelling on an offense or injury because they’re masochists, but because they feel something important was left unresolved, unfinished. They generally aren’t seeking revenge, but justice.
A deeply human need that stems from reason (not just emotion)
“Justice is carried within the cause,” Quintilian said almost two thousand years ago. Since then, we have remained preoccupied with the idea of justice. Perhaps because, behind our desire for things to be fair, lies a deeper anxiety: the fear of suffering injustice, as François de La Rochefoucauld pointed out.
Interestingly, psychological research shows that our sense of justice is not simply an impulsive emotional reaction, as we often think. A neuroimaging study conducted at the University of Chicago found that in people who are particularly sensitive to justice, brain regions related to reasoning and cognitive evaluation are activated more than areas associated with emotion.
In other words, when we feel that something is unfair, we don’t just automatically react with anger to what happened; we also make a rational assessment of how things should have been, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.
Humans are an extraordinarily cooperative species, as we depend on each other to survive, work, raise our children, and build communities. Therefore, it’s likely that our brains have developed highly sophisticated mechanisms to detect when someone breaks the rules.
When someone unfairly harms or hurts us, we not only suffer a specific loss or injury, but an expectation is also shattered: the belief that relationships should be governed by principles of respect and fairness. It is precisely this shattering that we find so difficult to accept.
The problem beyond the damage
We often think that what hurts is the injury itself, but that’s not the case (or at least not entirely). Many times what we really need, beyond financial compensation, is to feel that justice has been served.
The problem with injustice, beyond the suffering it can cause, is that it shatters some of our basic beliefs, those that help us navigate the world. We assume, more or less consciously, that there is a relationship between actions and consequences, so those who act correctly are more likely to be treated with respect, and if someone causes serious harm, they must be held accountable.
These beliefs give us a sense of order, predictability, and security. However, when an injustice occurs, especially if it seems to go unpunished, this mental framework crumbles. Therefore, the psychological impact often extends far beyond the initial harm. We not only have to deal with the direct consequences of the damage suffered, but also with the unsettling feeling that the rules that gave meaning to our world have ceased to function.
That’s when we start asking ourselves: “Why did this happen to me?”, “How is it possible that there are no consequences?”, or “What will prevent it from happening again?” The wound isn’t limited to physical or emotional damage; it also affects our view of the world and our relationships.
That’s why some people continue to wait for months for forgiveness that never comes, or become embroiled in legal battles that last for years. What they long for is redress, for someone to confirm that they weren’t exaggerating, that they weren’t wrong, that what they experienced truly mattered, and above all, that their values remain valid, because that restores their sense of coherence and trust in the world and in others.
Restorative justice, a different perspective on healing
In recent years, we have begun to differentiate between two forms of justice, which respond to different psychological needs.
On the one hand, retributive justice is based on the principle of proportionality: whoever causes harm must experience an equivalent consequence. This form of justice fulfills a clear social function, as it establishes limits, deters certain behaviors, and reinforces shared norms. However, from a psychological perspective, its effect on the victim’s emotional experience is more limited.
On the other hand, restorative justice introduces a different dimension. It doesn’t focus exclusively on punishment, but on rebuilding the damaged psychological fabric. It’s not just about “what should happen to the perpetrator,” but about “what the affected person needs so that what happened stops reshaping their emotional and cognitive life.”
From this perspective, justice ceases to be merely an external mechanism of social regulation and becomes an internal process of reorganizing meaning. When someone suffers significant harm, what is altered is not only their immediate well-being, but also their map of expectations. Their understanding of how the world works, what they can expect from others, and what level of security is reasonable to expect all change.
That’s why, even when retributive justice is served, some people experience a sense of emotional incompleteness. Not because the outcome is objectively insufficient, but because the internal system that gives meaning to the experience hasn’t been reorganized. An external entity, like a judge, has acknowledged the harm, but we haven’t processed it psychologically, so we’re unable to integrate and find closure for that experience.
Restorative justice addresses precisely this deeper level because it not only provides for the punishment of harm, but also for the recognition of its impact, which validates the subjective experience and allows for the construction of a coherent narrative. Obviously, this doesn’t eliminate suffering overnight or erase what happened, but it can significantly modify how we process that memory.
Perhaps one of the most important lessons we can learn from all this is that the need for justice is legitimate. There is nothing wrong with wanting things to be fair. Furthermore, we don’t operate solely on the basis of proportionality; we also experience a deep need for consistency, recognition, validation, and meaning.
References:
Yoder, K. J. & decety, J. (2014) The Good, the Bad, and the Just: Justice Sensitivity Predicts Neural Response during Moral Evaluation of Actions Performed by Others. Journal of Neuroscience; 34(12): 4161-4166.
Taylor, A. (2009) Psychology at the Cutting Edge: An invited article Justice as a Basic Human Need. New Zealand Journal of Psychology; 38(2): 5-10.
Leave a Reply