Has your wife or girlfriend ever told you: you don't have feelings for others? Maybe you're not a prick after all, maybe you're just taking too much Tylenol.
A new study suggests that taking acetaminophen – better known by its common brand name, Tylenol – not only helps reduce pain, but may also decrease a person’s ability to feel empathy.
Researchers from The Ohio State University found that when test subjects took acetaminophen before learning about the suffering of others – induced by social or physical factors – they thought they experienced less pain than the test subjects who had not taken the drug.
“These findings suggest other people’s pain doesn’t seem as big of a deal to you when you’ve taken acetaminophen,” said Dominik Mischkowski, a co-author of the study and a former PhD student of psychology at Ohio State. “Acetaminophen can reduce empathy as well as serve as a painkiller.”
The study was published last week in the journal of Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. It was co-authored by Mischkowski and Ohio State researchers Baldwin Way, a member of the Wexner Medical Center’s Institute for Behavioural Medicine Research, and Jennifer Crocker, an eminent scholar in social psychology.
A different study, published last year in Psychological Science, found that acetaminophen may dull our ability to feel positive emotions and diminish our emotional responses more generally.
Acetaminophen can be found in 500 different non-prescription medicines, according to Health Canada’s website, including Tylenol (in which it is the main ingredient), NyQuil, NeoCitran, Midol and Robitussin Total Cough Cold & Flu.
The researchers conducted two experiments, the first involving 80 students, the second involving 114. During each experiment, half the group was given acetaminophen, while the other half received a placebo.
In the first, participants rated other people’s pain after reading scenarios about their misfortunes; in the second, they rated how physically painful they found short blasts of white noise and how painful they believed it would be for others.
In each instance, those who had taken acetaminophen showed less empathy towards other study participants. In the white noise experiment, the group that received the drug said the noise caused them less pain as a result of the painkiller, which could explain why they rated the suffering of others as less severe.
“Together, these findings suggest that the physical painkiller acetaminophen reduces empathy for pain and provide a new perspective on the neurochemical bases of empathy,” the study’s abstract states. “These drug-induced reductions in empathy raise concerns about the broader social side effects of acetaminophen, which is taken by almost a quarter of US adults each week.”
A 2004 study, published in Social Cognitive Science, could potentially explain the researchers’ findings. It showed that the same part of the brain is activated whether the person is experiencing pain or imagining the pain of other people. In technical terms, “there is a partial cerebral commonality between perceiving pain in another individual and experiencing it oneself.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/health...ty-to-feel-other-peoples-pain?__lsa=be22-b362
A new study suggests that taking acetaminophen – better known by its common brand name, Tylenol – not only helps reduce pain, but may also decrease a person’s ability to feel empathy.
Researchers from The Ohio State University found that when test subjects took acetaminophen before learning about the suffering of others – induced by social or physical factors – they thought they experienced less pain than the test subjects who had not taken the drug.
“These findings suggest other people’s pain doesn’t seem as big of a deal to you when you’ve taken acetaminophen,” said Dominik Mischkowski, a co-author of the study and a former PhD student of psychology at Ohio State. “Acetaminophen can reduce empathy as well as serve as a painkiller.”
The study was published last week in the journal of Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. It was co-authored by Mischkowski and Ohio State researchers Baldwin Way, a member of the Wexner Medical Center’s Institute for Behavioural Medicine Research, and Jennifer Crocker, an eminent scholar in social psychology.
A different study, published last year in Psychological Science, found that acetaminophen may dull our ability to feel positive emotions and diminish our emotional responses more generally.
Acetaminophen can be found in 500 different non-prescription medicines, according to Health Canada’s website, including Tylenol (in which it is the main ingredient), NyQuil, NeoCitran, Midol and Robitussin Total Cough Cold & Flu.
The researchers conducted two experiments, the first involving 80 students, the second involving 114. During each experiment, half the group was given acetaminophen, while the other half received a placebo.
In the first, participants rated other people’s pain after reading scenarios about their misfortunes; in the second, they rated how physically painful they found short blasts of white noise and how painful they believed it would be for others.
In each instance, those who had taken acetaminophen showed less empathy towards other study participants. In the white noise experiment, the group that received the drug said the noise caused them less pain as a result of the painkiller, which could explain why they rated the suffering of others as less severe.
“Together, these findings suggest that the physical painkiller acetaminophen reduces empathy for pain and provide a new perspective on the neurochemical bases of empathy,” the study’s abstract states. “These drug-induced reductions in empathy raise concerns about the broader social side effects of acetaminophen, which is taken by almost a quarter of US adults each week.”
A 2004 study, published in Social Cognitive Science, could potentially explain the researchers’ findings. It showed that the same part of the brain is activated whether the person is experiencing pain or imagining the pain of other people. In technical terms, “there is a partial cerebral commonality between perceiving pain in another individual and experiencing it oneself.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/health...ty-to-feel-other-peoples-pain?__lsa=be22-b362
