Social pain: characteristics, causes and associated psychological factors

Pain is an unpleasant experience suffered by living beings in a part of their body, being caused by various reasons and it is worth highlighting two types of pain: physical pain and social pain.

There is considerable consensus that social pain could be defined as an emotional experience that is unpleasant and is triggered when a person feels rejected by other people with whom you want to integrate socially, so that this rejection can produce the same feelings of suffering as if you experience pain physical.

This article will try to explain the differences and common characteristics between physical pain and social pain.

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The concept of pain

When we speak of the concept of pain we are referring to a universal experience in all beings; However, the different ways of suffering pain and the various ways of feeling it have many nuances.

For example, when we accidentally cut our finger while slicing a lemon, we will most likely experience pain in that finger; while we also usually feel pain when we feel the rejection of a loved one or a person we admire.

The word to refer to that sensation that we experience in both cases is pain; however, the origin that caused it is totally different. Then One wonders if the physiological mechanisms underlying both types of pain are similar..

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What is social pain?

Social pain is defined as an emotional experience that is upsetting and unpleasant, being triggered when a person feels rejected by another person or by a group of people with whom he would like to relateIn such a way that this rejection suffered can cause that person a suffering very similar to that which he would experience due to physical pain. Furthermore, social pain also includes experiences of loneliness, ostracism, stacking, grief, loss, rejection, interpersonal conflict, and negative social feedback.

Currently, there is research that has allowed us to know the role of the social factor in people to adapt to pain and about how fluctuations in mood or behavior can trigger supportive responses in other people and also changes in their social relationships. Furthermore, neuroscience research has identified a shared underlying neural pathway in the emergencies of social pain and physical pain.

The social rejection of a person is experienced by herself with feelings of pain due to her reaction to that rejection is measured by the same neurological processing systems as if you were experiencing pain physical.

That is why social rejection, suffering bullying, and other forms that make a person feel socially excluded, It has been shown that they will cause social pain in the person who suffers it, being a deep and devastating pain to various levels. The person's brain experiencing that social pain as if it had just suffered a physical blow.

It is essential to give the importance it deserves to bullying or any form of social rejection that many people suffer daily, highlighting children, which is why both psychology and neurosciences have conducted numerous studies in this regard.

In addition, it is frequent that people and society in general do not give the same importance to social violence, the result of the rejection that triggers the isolation of the person who has been rejected, than to physical violence, despite the fact that the pain experienced in both cases is quite similar, the pain may leave worse psychological consequences Social.

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Relationship between social pain and physical pain

Social pain and physical pain, when suffered, get to activate similar brain regions as a way of responding to the emotional experience suffered due to the two types of discomfort. And it is that both are capable of activating dysphoric emotional states, causing patterns of cognitive evaluation and also motivating behavioral changes.

In turn, research that has analyzed both types of pain has been able to discover that people who are more sensitive to physical pain, in most cases they are also sensitive to social pain. Sensitivity towards experiencing physical pain has also been linked to experiences of rejection or social support and social pain.

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Experiments on social pain

An investigation studied the neurophysiology of social pain with functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques (FMRI), discovering that the brain areas involved in the anguish caused by physical pain also they play a relevant role in the anguish caused by a failed social experience that has been painful for the person.

On the other hand, people who had greater social support or a busier social life showed a less activity in those brain areas involved in both physical pain and social pain. This research was able to show that suffering a negative evaluation on a social level, accompanied by negative comments that denote rejection of their person by others, activate brain regions that are related to the affective dimension from pain.

Scientific hypotheses and theories have been developed about the biological utility that this overlap between social pain and pain could have. physical pain as evolutionary mechanisms to serve as a tool for social animals to respond to different threats to inclusion Social.

There is other research to suggest that in animals and humans there is a convergence between the two types of pain at various levels, since due to the long process of development and path towards maturity that human beings experience, the system they have of social attachment could have been superimposed on the pain system, taking as its own that signal of perceiving pain in the face of social rejection in order to avoid the harmful consequences that social separation and isolation.

When a person suffers from social pain in a specific way, his way of responding to that negative event could be socially appropriate; On the other hand, if that social pain were to become a chronic condition, their self-esteem could be affected, at the same time that they could develop feelings of rejection towards others and behave in a way against them, in a way that would use ineffective as well as harmful coping strategies, reducing your intentions to engage in a behavior prosocial.

There are also studies on social pain that have found that this pain has a tendency to reappear years after the negative social situation experienced in the past has ended, so that real cases have been found of adults who continue to experience unpleasant feelings related to social pain that could be closely related to pain. bullying suffered during childhood.

Likewise, it was found that if people who had had social experiences were asked negative in the past, 5 years ago maximum, experienced intense pain when reliving mentally.

A meta-analysis in which a sample of 308,849 people was studied in an exhaustive way, during a follow-up period (7 and a half years), reflected among its results that the people who they had healthy social relationships and strong bonds with other people they were often in better health and they were also estimated to have up to a 50% chance of survival greater; being comparable with the action of quitting smoking in the long term. Furthermore, social isolation outweighed other health risk factors such as sedentary lifestyle and obesity.