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PSYB01 - Assignment - Pain as a social Glue.

Pain as social glue: Shared pain Increases Cooperation

1.  The authors of this article are predicting that when exposed to a pain induced environment, a group of individuals tend to have better bonding and cooperation than a group of individual who are exposed to no- pain condition. The authors are making this prediction to prove the effects of pain in bringing a group or a society closer. As the title says “Shared pain Increases Cooperation”. The results from this study shows how there is cooperation among a group of people when exposed to different environments that induced pain. Social theorists have proposed this theory long before these experiments took place. Therefore, this experiment is novel.

2.  The authors experimented if sharing a painful experience or a non-painful experience better improve bonding among the group of people. Then they tested if these results would increase cooperation. In the first experiment, the researchers asked the participants in the group to dip their hands in a vessel filled with cold water and to pick up balls and put it in a beaker placed under the cold water. The participants in the no- paint condition did the same experiment with normal room temperature water. After, the participants were asked to do squats where their back were straight and keen bent to 90 degrees. The participants in the no- pain environment were asked to balance on one leg and were allowed to switch legs when feel tired. In the second experiment, they were introduced to the cooperative game where if all the group members said 7, would be equally highly rewarded and if one individual chose a lesser number, only that individual will be given a huge reward. In the third experiment, they used hot chili pepper as the pain stimulation and the no-pain stimulation participants were given hard candy, which they have to hold in their mouth for 60 seconds. The methods used were appropriate for the experiment but also comes with risk. Cold water can make the participants sick, and the squatting can give them back pains or leg pains. Also the hot chilli pepper made a participant sneeze which was annoying to some other participants and in the end they did not feel the group connection due to the same reason. Therefore the chilli method was not appropriate but it did help the experiment and helped the authors reach a conclusion.

3.  In the first experiment, where the participants dip their hand in the cold water and pick up balls, the results show us that the intensity of pain and unpleasantness was higher in pain condition than in no-pain condition. As predicted that the participants who went through the same pain situation felt more connected than the participants who completed the non-pain experiment condition, the pain had an intermediate influence on the bond between participants.

 In the second experiment, there was an effective pain manipulation. The individuals exposed to pain environment showed higher amount of pain and unpleasantness than the participants in the non-pain environment. Also the pain tasks were considered more hostile than the controlled environment. The researchers predicted that the individuals in the pain conditions would be more cooperative and chose a higher number in the game than those in the non- pain conditions. Therefore, the result was that participants in the pain induced task selected higher number than participants in the non-pain environment.

            In the third experiment where participants in the pain condition consumed hot chilli pepper, they displayed higher pain intensity. They also showed more unpleasantness than the participants in the no-pain condition. In this experiment, while comparing with the control task, the pain task was more threatening and challenging. Here the author predicted that those in the pain condition tend to have better cooperation behavior in choosing a higher number in the game than the participants in the no-pain induced condition. They concluded that the participants in the pain induced environment chose to be more cooperative and chose higher numbers.

In all three experiments, the pain persisted even when the experimenters changed the age and gender of the participants and also the group size.

4.  We can use different methods to test this question. Instead of using the cold water and metal balls technique, we could use a different experiment where the participants are asked to pick up different metal substances form the floor. These different metal substances are heated to different temperature and the participants doesn’t know which one is heated to the highest temperature. Also instead of the hot chilli pepper method we could give the person hot coffee to drink. The participant will be asked to drink the coffee in one sip.  But these might affect the experiments in different ways. The risk involved will be different too. The metal objects might burn the participants and also the hot coffee might burn the participants mouth. But it is better than the hot chilli pepper since participants were sneezing and required yogurt and cold water to help them have it. The intensity of the pain and the unpleasantness will be high for the participants in the pain task. Which as shown in the other experiments would make the participants have a stronger bond and better cooperation in a group.