Rejection: It Hurts

Nearly everyone, at least once, has experienced some sort of social rejection, loss, or exclusion - anything from finding out your friends all went out without you last weekend, to breaking up with your significant other, to that pretty woman in the office declining the dinner invitation you've been practicing in your head for weeks. And for those who have experienced such rejections, we know that they can sting. Rejection hurts... literally.

Literally? According to some studies, social pain (the pain we perceive from a social rejection, exclusion, or loss) may travel down some of the same neural pathways as physical pain. So what is pain? Biologically, it's a response to tissue damage. The point of pain is to alert us that something is wrong, so that we can withdraw from the source, and begin recovery. We are familiar with social rejections being described as painful - a "painful" breakup or a "broken" heart - but aren't these just figures of speech? Maybe. But scientists have reason to believe that social pains are just as real as physical ones. 

In a study entitled Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion a team of scientists analyzed the brain activity of participants who were playing a virtual ball game in which they were excluded. Pain information comes to a part of the brain call the cingulate cortex. In accordance with previous studies done on physical pain, the scientists performing this study focused on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) region of the participants' brains. In order to perform this study, the scientist took fMRI scans of the participants' brains while playing the virtual game. During the game, the participants were made to believe they were playing with to other people. These other players (actually just part of the computer program) allowed the participant to play with them for a period of time and then proceeded to exclude the participant by refusing to pass the participant the ball for the remainder of the game. In addition to the fMRI scans, the participants were asked to self report their levels of distress after the game had ended. The results of the study showed significant amounts of increased activity in the ACC during the time that the participants were being rejected, indicating that the ACC (where pain information is integrated) was activated during this time. These findings also aligned with the emotional stress at being ignored that participants self reported at the end of the study. 

Considered from a biological standpoint, it makes sense that emotional hurts might actually cause us pain. Evolutionarily, social interactions were a major key in human survival. Babies and children are highly dependent on parents, and cooperation and mutualism are major aspects of human societies. Even today, passing on ones genes requires some degree of social skills in finding a partner to do so with. Pain of rejection, then, could alert us to situations that could be potentially damaging to us in the social aspect of our survival. 

While there has been much speculation on the subject, this particular study used a biological basis to examine the idea, and produced measurable, significant data. For that reason I thought this article is strong in it's hypothesis and a reputable source of information. Additionally, it goes nicely with our chapter on pain, and I feel that it is highly relatable, as most of us have felt some form of social rejection or another. As a fairly sensitive person and a biology major, it was interesting to see how feelings can be so biologically linked, so close as that neurologically, they may cause the same reactions to somatosensory stimuli.  

Source (VT Libraries): http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu/10.1126%2Fscience.1089134