Why do you feel other people’s pain?
If you have shuddered upon seeing someone else in pain, here’s an explanation for it.
Generally one cannot help feeling a little (or a big) unpleasant shudder when you see someone getting hurt. Although that person may be a total stranger.
A team of Austrian researchers hence went forth to find out more about the mechanisms of empathy – this ability we have to understand, sometimes even to feel the emotions and pain of others.
THE PAIN OF OTHERS IS LESS POWERFUL THAN OURS
To understand our reactions, the scientists studied the faces of 150 people who felt their own pain, and were also in the sight of the pain of their relatives with light electric stimuli. They also tested the effect of placebo analgesia in these two situations. Result: thanks to brain imaging, they were able to determine that empathy with the suffering of others uses the same mechanisms as the “classic” circuit of pain. That is to say that our pain and the pain of others takes the same path in our brain. Nevertheless, it is still less “reactive” and sensations are reduced when it is not us who are injured.
As for the “false” tablets of painkillers, they reduced the intensity of pain in both cases. The placebo effect therefore also works even when one does not feel any physical pain!
Source: PNAS, October 13, 2015.
Maureen Diament
Photo: Getty Images
