title: When hurt will not heal: exploring the capacity to relive social and physical pain.
abstract: Recent discoveries suggest that social pain is as real and intense as physical pain, and that the social-pain system may have piggybacked on the brain structure that had evolved earlier for physical pain. The present study examined an important distinction between social and physical pain: Individuals can relive and reexperience social pain more easily and more intensely than physical pain. Studies 1 and 2 showed that people reported higher levels of pain after reliving a past socially painful event than after reliving a past physically painful event. Studies 3 and 4 found, in addition, that people performed worse on cognitively demanding tasks after they relived social rather than physical pain. Implications for research on social pain and theories about social pain are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Purdue University, Department of Psychological Sciences, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA. chen@psych.purdue.edu
authors.forename: Zhansheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Kipling D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fitness
authors.forename: Nicola C
authors.initials: NC
authors.lastname: Newton
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D010147:Pain Measurement / Q000523:psychology; D012059:Rejection, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D012934:Social Isolation; D055815:Young Adult