The researchers measured the empathy of 80 college students by having them read several stories about other people’s’ suffering: One narrative involved a person enduring a knife cut that went down to the bone, and another described a person suffering the death of his father.
Advertisement
The researchers asked the participants to rate the noise blasts on a scale of 1 to 10 – from not unpleasant at all to extremely unpleasant.
A United States study has shown that taking drugs which include acetaminophen, such as the common painkiller Tylenol, cannot only tiresome your pain but also your empathy towards the pain of others.
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. Past research has shown it may blunt individual user’s emotions – both negative and positive. Taken together, the two studies suggest there’s a lot we need to learn about one of the most popular over-the-counter drugs, the researchers said adding that the reason for these effects are still unclear. “If you are having an argument with your spouse and you just took acetaminophen, this research suggests you might be less understanding of what you did to hurt your spouse’s feelings”. The participants and members of the researche team giving out the solution did not know which group was given the acetaminophen. This suggested lowered empathy when compared to participants who didn’t take the painkiller. “These drug-induced reductions in empathy raise concerns about the broader social side effects of acetaminophen, which is taken by nearly a quarter of USA adults each week”.
The study authors say they will continue to study the potential effects of acetaminophen on people’s emotions and behaviors, and want to test whether another common pain medication – ibuprofen – has a similar outcome.
Another part of the experiment involved meeting specific people and then watching situations where these people were socially ostracized.
Results from Experiment 1 showed that the effect of acetaminophen on perceived social pain was marginally significant. A separate experiment asked a participant to rate the hurt feelings of someone who had been excluded from a social game.
Studies have been showing that paracetamol may reduce the ability to feel others’ pain since 2004.
Advertisement
“In light of those results, it is understandable why using Tylenol to reduce your pain may also reduce your ability to feel other people’s pain as well”, Way said.
