Breakups really do hurt, according to CU researchers

Getting dumped and getting hit in the face with a dodgeball may have more in common than you think.

According to a study led by University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross and co-authored by Columbia psychology professors Walter Mischel and Edward E. Smith, the emotional pain of a breakup closely resembles physical pain.

“For a long time, researchers have known that there are specific regions of the brain that respond to physical pain. We wanted to identify specific brain regions for emotional pain,” Smith said, explaining that the same brain regions are active when people experience physical pain and emotional pain. “Our study shows that the expression ‘I’m really hurting from this rejection’ can be taken literally.”

Columbia neuroscience professor Eric Kandel, a Nobel Prize winner in physiology and medicine who was not involved in the study, said these results show just how much the field of psychology can benefit from a more biological outlook.

“Every psychological phenomenon has a biological cause, and the study confirms the importance of this idea,” Kandel said.

The study was published in the March issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers looked at the fMRIs—a type of specialized brain scan—of 40 subjects as they performed two tasks, one dealing with social rejection and another dealing with physical pain.

In the social rejection task, subjects were required to look at a picture of their “rejecter” in order to relive the specific rejection experience. In the same task, subjects were also asked to look at a picture of a friend and to think about a positive experience shared with that friend. In the physical pain task, subjects were given a hot stimulation on their left forearm, followed by a warm stimulation in the same area.

After each task, subjects were asked to self-report how they felt from one to five, where a lower number indicated more distress.

One of the unique features in the study, Smith said, was making the social rejection task as realistic as possible. Smith says the biggest challenge for the team was to recruit willing subjects who wanted to relive an emotional experience for the sake of science.

“We got sensational results because we did not create a lab situation where people are rejected,” Smith said. “We took advantage of the fact that there are people out there who felt rejected from a recent breakup.”

During both the social rejection and physical pain tasks, whole-brain analysis was performed using fMRIs. Results indicated that the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula were activated in both tasks.

Kandel praised the study as both important and well-executed.

“Meaningful experiments in cognitive psychology often require two things: powerful imaging techniques to reveal with precision and accuracy where something is located, but equally important, or perhaps more important, is a sophisticated behavioral experiment. I think the study achieves this beautifully,” Kandel said. “I believe it is a well-controlled and thoughtful experiment, and the findings were interpreted in a creative way.”
news@columbiaspectator.com