Abstract
Pain is a fundamental human experience that triggers a range of social and psychological responses. In this study, we present behavioral and fMRI data to examine the effect of multiple group memberships salience on reported and neural indices of pain. We found that participants expressed higher levels of pain when more social group memberships were salient. This is consistent with the notion that pain itself motivates people to communicate their pain, and more so when multiple psychological resources are salient. In addition, fMRI results reveal an interesting twist: when participants increased their pain reporting as group memberships increased (from one group to four), there was a corresponding relative reduction in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula activation. These results provide evidence for an adaptive response to pain: the more people make use of the social resources at their disposal when experiencing pain, the less pain areas are activated.
Highlights
Pain is a subjective sensory and emotional experience that contributes substantially to global disease burden [1,2,3]
We examined evidence for two competing hypotheses: first, that experiencing pain in the context of salient group memberships would lead to greater reporting of pain (H1; communication hypothesis)
We examined brain activation in regions implicated in the experience of pain to explore whether the salience of a varying number of group memberships would impact pain reports and neural indices in the same way
Summary
Pain is a subjective sensory and emotional experience that contributes substantially to global disease burden [1,2,3]. Subjective, and intrapersonal; but it is experienced and expressed within a social context [4,5,6,7,8]. Communicating pain to others is a key step in securing aid and social support from others [9]. This makes it important to understand how social resources contribute to how pain is experienced and reported. Social group memberships are one way to examine how social resources affect pain and its communication. Group memberships—and the social identity that we derive from them—can be considered valuable resources that people may draw upon in responding to pain.
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