From The Journal of Improbable Research:
Mistreated by a supervisor at work? Would it make you feel a little bit better if you could, say, torment a voodoo doll?
Professor Lindie Hanyu Liang (at the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada) and colleagues have investigated such things. In return for a $1 payment, 195 full-time employees living in the US or Canada participated in an experiment in which they were given the opportunity to retaliate (after recalling an abusive workplace scenario) against an online Voodoo Doll, provided by Dumb.com (“Your source for dumb stuff”) * see note below
“[…] we asked the participants to use the materials provided (e.g., pins, pliers, fire) on the doll over the next minute.”