Is social pain just in your head?
- Kendra Babbey
- Jun 9, 2021
- 1 min read
Day 155: One thing I learned today...
Is social pain just in your head?
Matt Lieberman, a researcher, studied social pain (think of isolation or being made fun of). He created a game called cyberball. which was a game created for an experiment. Brain scans were collected throughout the “game”
This is a digital game. The participant is in a room playing and told 2 other people are in others rooms as well playing the same game. What the participant does not know is that there are no others actually playing. The participant virtually sees 2 characters and when the ball is thrown the them, they can respond by pushing a button to throw to player A or B.
At first the ball is passed around between all three. Then at a certain point the ball is no longer passed to the participant. During this, isolation is experienced.
The scans of the participant showed the same areas of the brain activated during social pain as during physical pain. Which means our bodies may not know the difference between the two.
The study was then set up again which two groups of participants. One was given a placebo and the other was given Tylenol. The Tylenol was shown to block the social pain.
Source: Bulletproof Radio- 822. How to Build Your Community and Grow Your Influence.
Comentarios