Social pain: characteristics, causes and associated psychological factors.

A summary of the characteristics of social pain and its social and neurological causes.

Pain is an unpleasant experience that living beings suffer in a part of their body, being caused by various reasons and being able to highlight two types of pain: physical pain and social pain..

There is broad consensus that social pain can be defined as an emotional experience that is unpleasant and is triggered when a person feels rejected by other people with whom he or she wishes to integrate socially, so that this rejection can produce the same feelings of suffering as if he or she were experiencing physical pain.

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

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 different ways of feeling it present many nuances. the different ways of feeling pain are very nuanced..

For example, when we unintentionally cut our finger while slicing a lemon, we are likely to feel pain in that finger; while we also tend to feel pain when we feel the rejection of a loved one or a person we admire.

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

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/she would like to relate to, in such a way that this rejection can produce for that person a suffering very similar to the one he/she would experience because of a physical pain.This rejection can cause the person to suffer in a way that is very similar to the suffering he or she would experience as a result of physical pain. In addition, social pain also includes experiences of loneliness, ostracism, piling up, bereavement, loss, rejection, interpersonal conflict and negative social feedback.

Currently, there is research that has provided insight into the role of the social factor in people adapting to pain and on how fluctuations in mood or behavior can trigger supportive responses in others and also changes in their social relationships.. In addition, neuroscience research has identified a shared underlying neural pathway in the emergence of social pain and physical pain.

A person's social rejection is experienced by him or herself with feelings of pain because his or her reaction to that rejection is measured by the same neurological processing systems as if he or she were experiencing physical pain.

This is why social rejection, bullying, and other ways that make a person feel socially excluded are proven to cause social pain in the person who suffers it, which is deep and devastating on many levels. The person's brain experiences this social pain as if he or she 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.In this regard, both psychology and neuroscience have conducted numerous studies on the subject.

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

Relationship between social pain and physical pain.

The social pain and the physical pain, when they are suffered, activate similar brain regions as a way of responding to the emotional experience suffered because of the two types of discomfort. Both are capable of activating dysphoric emotional states, causing cognitive evaluation patterns and also motivating behavioral changes.

At the same time, research that has analyzed both types of pain has discovered that people who are more sensitive to physical pain are in most cases also sensitive to social pain.. Sensitivity to the experience of physical pain has also been related to experiences of rejection or social support and social pain.

Experiments on social pain

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

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

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

Other research suggests that in animals and in humans there is a convergence between the two types of pain at different levelsDue to the long process of development and the path to maturity experienced by humans, the social attachment system may have been superimposed on the pain system, taking as its own also that signal of perceiving pain in the face of social rejection in order to avoid the very harmful consequences of social separation and isolation for human beings.

When a person suffers occasional social pain, the way he/she responds to this negative event may be socially appropriate; however, if this social pain becomes a chronic condition, his/her self-esteem may be affected, and he/she may develop feelings of rejection towards others and behave in a way that is against them, thus using ineffective and harmful coping strategies and reducing his/her intentions to engage in prosocial behavior.

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

It was also found that if people who had suffered negative social experiences in the past were asked to recall them at most 5 years ago, they experienced intense pain when they mentally relived them.

A meta-analysis in which a sample of 308,849 people were studied exhaustively, during a follow-up period (7 and a half years), reflected among its results that people who maintained healthy social relationships and strong bonds with other people tended to enjoy better health and were also estimated to have a survival probability up to 50% higher; being comparable to the action of quitting smoking in the long term. In addition, social isolation outweighed other health risk factors such as sedentary lifestyles and obesity.