Is emotional pain worse than physical pain? Researchers say yes!

So what that's saying is if I call someone a nincompoop it's more painful to them than me punching them in the face?

I know it's all sciencey, but I'm not overly convinced by it.

'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me...?'

This makes sense. Emotional pain can linger long after an event has occurred and have lots of triggers, as well as digging deeper into a person's identity, whereas even sufferers from chronic physical pain have said that they're able to cut themselves off from it at times.

I think emotional pain and physical pain are completely incomparable: for example, extreme emotional pain can feel like the worst thing in the world, but I've never felt extreme physical pain so I can't really compare.

At least with physical pain your senses get dumbed after a while with adrenaline/loss of consciousness: there is no escape from emotional pain though.

I'd much rather be punched in the face than experience extreme emotional pain. Our brains are wired to forget physical pain (hello childbirth. if women remembered how bad that hurts, we wouldn't survive as a species). But we have to learn to live with emotional pain.

"Pain caused by emotional distress is felt more deeply and lasts longer tan pain caused by physical injuries, a new study has found out. "

Just from an evolutionary point of view this makes sense.

We evolved to deal with physical pain and physical threats. Physical pain is what we as a species have faced for millions of years and we evolved to deal with that type of threat to our survival. (Though the fact I can't move for an hour after 10 minutes of exercise on my Wii Fit makes me question that sometimes)

In the grand scope of human history we haven't been out of our feral states for very long in evolutionary terms. Eat. Sleep. Mate. That's 99 percent of our programming.

How to handle public humiliation?

Not so much.

It makes sense to me. I know I'd rather be kicked int he shins than be forced to sing the National Anthem in front of 75,000 people at Invesco Stadium.

This totally explains why people suffering with physical pain (burn victims, for instance) can immediately resume their acting careers, while people suffering with emotional pain (sex addicts like David Duchovny, for example) must rely on therapy and pain killers for years just to function in everyday life!

Excellent, ground breaking work doctors ^_^

P.S. How surprised are you to learn that Dr. Kip Williams (mentioned in the article) has his Ph.D. in "Social Psychology" with a minor in "Consumer Behavior"...

http://psyclops.psych.purdue.edu/~kip/

Imagine that -- a psychologist believes emotional pain is worse that physical pain... shocking, really.

Think about the last real injury you had. Now think about in High School when someone called you fat, or ugly, or slow, or whatever subject tends to hit close to home. Which one of those 2 still hurts the most?

Which is more debilitating in the long term:

A broken leg or schizophrenia?

This study wasn't about which "healed" faster, but rather which one was more debilitating.

And even without the study it's obvious that psychological impariments ("emotional pain" to the layman) has a much longer rate of debilitation than purely physical pain.

A burn victim may be physically "able" to return to work, but from a psychological point of view the emotional pain from being disfigured would last far, far longer (and ultimately be more debilitating) than his physical injuries.

"In an experiment that involved giving participants cognitive tasks...."

A broken leg would have almost no impact on a person's ability to perform cognitive tasks.

Suffering from a serious depression would.

Sounds like they're testing the wrong faculty. Its not that one kind of pain is worse than another, but that we remember emotional pain more vividly than physical, often because emotional pain elicits a more involving intellectual response.

E.g. 'This period pain is so overwhelming I'm gonna be sick - reach for the Nurofen,' vs. 'My wonderful relationship has ended horribly - reach for the strategies to help me regain my confidence and abiltiy to leave the house without sobbing'

And surely that's because the body is designed *not* to remember physical pain; otherwise, how would anyone ever have more than one baby?

Does this mean that I can file assault charges on any girl who ever dumped me?

the masochists will definitely agree with this. i mean whens the last time you met an emotional masochist? "Yeah call me fat and ugly and then take my dog away."

I think this is why psychotherapists charge more than physical therapists.

Matt, I feel like sticks and stones will break your bones but words will break your heart.

I dunno about yall but the worst pain I ever felt was in my heart. I rather have a broken arm than broken heart. Ya feel ?

People don't typically write poems, books or songs about how badly that compound fracture hurt or how they are still nursing the wounds suffered from that last ice hockey match. It's no coincidence then that it's the emotional pain we experience that drives much of our art, not the physical.

The Body will heal, but Feeling is everlasting.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the argument and some points do appear valid (e.g. duration)...

...but the apparent validity does not remove the bias nor the subjective nature of the research.

First of all, the notion of "pain" itself is extremely subjective. Many hospitals to this day still use the 1-10 pain scale, which is a chart complete with happy/sad faces. Moreover, as rwylie mentioned, comparing "emotional" (psychological) and "physical" (physiological) pain is like compairing apples to oranges.

Of course an "emotional" pain (like the loss of a loved one) is going to be remembered longer than a "physical" pain -- the actual physical feeling -- of an event (like being shot by a firearm)...

...but why should this criteria classify it as "worse?" Sure, the longer duration may even imply a greater impact of an event on the person's lifestyle...

...but, again, why should this criteria classify it as "worse?" There is no conclusive reason why it should (or should not, for that matter) because the entire premise is subjective in nature.

Why shouldn't we instead measure the release of specific chemicals in the body after physical/emotional trauma and use the concentration of said chemicals in the blood stream as criteria for "worse?"

For instance, doesn't the body naturally releases endorphines both to put an injured body into "shock" and to stimulate the "fight of flight" response? Why not use this as criteria for "worse?" (I could be wrong here, but you get the idea...)

Why not extend the research in this article to make a conclusion on whether physicial or emotional "pleasure" is "better?" We could make the same arguments about duration in this sense as well...

Is the memory/thoughts of the taste of food "better" than the actual act of eating the food?

Some could argue that, yes, the thought is "better" because it lasts longer, etc... while others could argue that, no, the act is "better" because it provides nutrition to the body, whereas a thought does not. As convincing as either argument may be, both are subjective and depend on the original researchers definition of "better."

Don't get me wrong, certain aspects of psychology have their merits... but psychological research has always suffered from this lack of empiracal data -- the same study could be conducted with other sample populations from various nations, regions, etc., and I doubt their results would be replicated 100% of the time.

I've had at least 3 serious bone crushing motorcycle accidents, but they didn't compare to depression. If your mind is weak, the body follows.

i believe this. especially the pain lingering.

I'd rather have my heart broke than my arm broke. Personal preference. Very interesting report, though. That helps to explain why people get so pissed off at me when I mock their bad moods. :)

The worst pain i have ever felt was emotional. I've had a few incidents that provided me with physical pain and i yet have to change my mind. Physical pain hurts a lot but it goes away. Emotional pain stays with you forever. I would rather take a broken arm than a broken heart any day.

What about those people that have everlasting physical pain? I agree with rwylie's statement. How can you compare physical pain to emotional pain? It sounds like it comes down along the same nature of preference as me preferring vanilla ice cream and you preferring chocolate. How do we know that the greater pain between physical and emotional is not purely preferential?

Duh

The only thing that matches the western minds arrogance is it's ignorance.

This has been scientifically proven for over 50 years. The Russians are light years ahead of us in this research and have actually weaponized it.

I have another shocker for you. We're actually spiritual beings. One more for the road, the mind controls matter.

I know I know. Fascinating stuff.

yeah emotional pain hurts more than physical pain because i lost my dad to a brutal car wreck years ago and it still hurts sometimes knowing he's not there, but i tend to forget ohysical pain quite easily. and i've experienced alot of both but emotional pain, i can feel even now!

Pain....it's all relevent!