Citation

Dewall CN, Baumeister RF. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 2006; 91(1): 1-15.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1270, USA. dewall@darwin.psy.fsu.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/0022-3514.91.1.1

PMID

16834476

Abstract

Prior findings of emotional numbness (rather than distress) among socially excluded persons led the authors to investigate whether exclusion causes a far-reaching insensitivity to both physical and emotional pain. Experiments 1-4 showed that receiving an ostensibly diagnostic forecast of a lonesome future life reduced sensitivity to physical pain, as indicated by both (higher) thresholds and tolerance. Exclusion also caused emotional insensitivity, as indicated by reductions in affective forecasting of joy or woe over a future sports contest outcome (Experiment 3), as well as lesser empathizing with another person's suffering from either romantic breakup (Experiment 4) or a broken leg (Experiment 5). The insensitivities to pain and emotion were highly intercorrelated.

Language: en