News from an Australian study. Good things to remember when it's tempting to insult an individual rather than deal with issues.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/389/4158295.html Hurt feelings really do hurt physically
| Michael Woods, Block News Alliance | |
| Published October 19, 2003 | |
The old nursery rhyme was wrong. Sticks and stones can break your bones, and names can hurt you, too.
Researchers have revealed the biology behind what every victim of a putdown, cheap shot or social snub knows all too well: Social rejection hurts. They showed that hurt feelings affect exactly the same region of the brain as a broken bone or other physical injury.
"This study should make people more aware of the impact of negative words and gestures toward others," said chief researcher Naomi Eisenberger, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. The study appears in the journal Science, which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Using magnetic resonance imaging, Eisenberger and associates in Australia studied brain activity in 13 volunteers as they played a video game designed to mimic social rejection. The game involved throwing a ball back and forth. Volunteers thought they were playing with two other people.
After a period of nice three-way play, the game forced the volunteers to sit on the sidelines. The other two "players," both controlled by the computer, began to throw the ball between themselves.
The social snub triggered nerve activity in a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, which also processes physical pain.
"This suggests that the hurt from getting punched or ignored at lunch comes, in part, from the same part of the brain," said an AAAS editorial that accompanied the study.
Jaak Pankseep, an authority on the biology of emotions who teaches at Bowling Green State and Northwestern universities, called it a "bold" study that validates the use of terms such as "hurt feelings."
"Emotional pain is an undesired psychological state of affairs," said Pankseep, who was not involved in the research.
Discovery of an overlap between the body's system for registering physical pain and social pain may have other implications, Eisenberger noted.
"Being around close friends or partners should make physical pain less distressing," she said. "Likewise, being in physical pain from a chronic condition should probably make us more sensitive to the possibility of social rejection."
The physical distress from social rejection also may help explain violent outbursts among socially isolated individuals, Eisenberger said. Pain is a proven cause of violence in animals, she added.
"Certainly there is bound to be a connection," Pankseep said, although it would be difficult to prove in humans. Nevertheless, the study should help people realize that emotional feelings have deep roots in the brain.
"We still need much more 'emotional education' in our society," he said, "and that can't happen until we accept the deep structure of our emotional nature."