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Why rejection really hurtsWhy do we say, “It hurts,” when we are away from those we love or rejected by those we want to be accepted by?
Naomi I. Eisenberger, a graduate student in psychology at UCLA and lead author of a study recently published in the journal Science, used a research technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor the brain activity of thirteen subjects who thought they were playing virtual catch in a computer game called “Cyberball.” In the study participants were actually exposed to two different types of social rejection, first believing that they would be playing catch with other participants, but subsequently being told that they had to wait due to technical problems. In the second condition the subjects started playing, only to have the computer generated “other players” stop throwing the ball to them after a few tries.
What the researchers measured wasn’t fielding percentages, but the subjects’ reactions to being and feeling left out. Working with Matthew D. Lieberman at the UCLA Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Eisenberger found that specific areas of the brain activated during the social exclusion conditions.
“Basically we found that he same parts of the brain that are involved in registering the feelings of physical pain are also involved in the pain that we feel following social rejection,” Eisenberger said. What was driving this study was the question whether social pain might share the same neurological basis as physical pain. Eisenberger cited previous studies, which had shown that an area of the brain known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) becomes activated when painful events occurs. In mammalian studies it was found that cutting the connections to the cingulate area results in reduced maternal responsiveness in hamsters and eliminates calling behaviors necessary to reestablish closeness and protection in baby squirrel monkeys, for example.
A second important finding from this study was that in the social exclusion condition, when the subjects believed that they had been intentionally left out, another brain area, the right ventral prefrontal cortex (RVPC) also activated.
The researchers suggest that the RVPC activation seemed to mediate some of the pain response of the intentional rejection state. This brain area activated when the subjects felt that they were intentionally snubbed, but not when they felt left out by accident. In previous studies on pain, activation of the RVPC is associated with a corresponding reduction in pain symptoms.
I asked Naomi Eisenberger for her own “take home message,” based on her findings. She observed that drugs, such as opioids used to treat pain, can also temporarily alleviate social pain, but being around people that we love is the best antidote for the pain that we experience when socially excluded. She said, “We need to be more careful. While kids are taught not to physically hurt each other' or hit each other, they’re not taught the importance of not rejecting each other – that the pain they can cause each other is real and cal last for a long time.”
For me, this study gives us some hard scientific evidence backing what we have always known in our inner hearts to be true; that being left out matters and that it hurts – the pain of exclusion is as real as that of any other kind of injury. It also underscores the biological rootedness of our emotions, reminding us that long ago, the survival of our species, and even now the survival of our children and ourselves depends on our being close enough together, included, giving us all a safe place to be and to grow.
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