Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: October 11, 2003
Latest Update: October 11, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Measuring Social Pain

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, October 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

A tiny blurb in the Los Angeles Times on Saturday, October 11, 2003, mentioned a new article that had just come out in Science Magazine, Feeling the Pain of Social Loss, by Jaak Panksepp. I'd like you to look at these abstracts, follow through and find the articles if this issue is important to you and then answer the discussion questions:

NEUROSCIENCE:
Feeling the Pain of Social Loss
Jaak Panksepp

Poets have long waxed lyrical about the pain of a broken heart. Now, as Panksepp explains in his Perspective, this metaphor may reflect real events in the mammalian brain. A new brain neuroimaging study (Eisenberger et al. ) reveals that the brain areas that are activated during the distress caused by social exclusion are also those activated during physical pain. Thus, we now have an explanation for the feeling of physical pain that accompanies emotional loss-whether that be the loss of a loved one, rejection by one's social group, or the distress of separation experienced by young animals.

The author is at the J. P. Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind and Behavior, Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA, and at the Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60201, USA. E-mail: jpankse@bgnet.bgsu.edu

Related articles in Science:

Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion
Naomi I. Eisenberger, Matthew D. Lieberman, and Kipling D. Williams
Science 2003 302: 290-292. (in Reports) [Abstract] [Full Text]

Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion
Naomi I. Eisenberger, 1 Matthew D. Lieberman, 1 Kipling D. Williams 2

A neuroimaging study examined the neural correlates of social exclusion and tested the hypothesis that the brain bases of social pain are similar to those of physical pain. Participants were scanned while playing a virtual ball-tossing game in which they were ultimately excluded. Paralleling results from physical pain studies, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was more active during exclusion than during inclusion and correlated positively with self-reported distress. Right ventral prefrontal cortex (RVPFC) was active during exclusion and correlated negatively with self-reported distress. ACC changes mediated the RVPFC-distress correlation, suggesting that RVPFC regulates the distress of social exclusion by disrupting ACC activity.

1. Department of Psychology, Franz Hall, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095–1563, USA. * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: neisenbe@ucla.edu
2. Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney NSW 2109, Australia.

Science News of the Week for the Week of October 10, 2003: From the same issue as the two abstracts above:

The Pain of Being Left Out: Does the experience of pain associated with social exclusion engage the same brain structures (the anterior cingulate cortex) that mediate the affective responses to physical pain? Eisenberger et al. (p. 290; see the Perspective by Panksepp ) tested the hypothesis by telling subjects that they would play a computer game with other individuals. They were then either passively excluded from the game while they watched (due to alleged technical problems), or were actively excluded from play after participating. Comparison of activity in the active exclusion versus inclusion conditions revealed greater activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which correlated with subsequent self-reporting of distress during exclusion.

CREDIT: EISENBERGER ET AL.

* * * * *

There is free access with registration to Science abstracts, but no free access to the full text of the articles. I backed up the abstracts here, because I'm not sure of how long they keep the archives up. jeanne

This little blurb shows that sociologists can no longer afford not to keep up with science news. The Nobel Prize was just awarded for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. And here we see that scientists are beginning to use MRI to explore visible evidence of things we once thought were purely affect. May this be a lesson in knowingness. Be sure to visit the Science site, find your way around it, and remember to be alert to what's happening in other fields. jeanne

* * * * *

Discussion Questions

1. Do these new studies suggest a use in criminology?

   Consider our nonanswerability, nontransparency, and our insensitivity to some of the situations we create in the criminal justice system. Consider whether others might listen to proponents of restorative justice if there were a reliable physical measure of pain.

2. Do these new studies suggest avenues of investigation in connection with racism, ethnic relations, sexism?

   Consider the drawback of "he said" "she said" when we try to sort out whether someone was or was not harmed. Granted we can't all run around hooked up to MRI machines to establish a social reality of harm, but might some of the measurements not serve usefully to redefine our concept of harm?

---

---