Study: How Common Pain Relievers Might Make You Lose Empathy

A new research shows that acetaminophen, main ingredient of pain killers, can relieve pain, but at the same make you feel less empathizing for both physical and social pains experienced by others.

According to the study, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, People who took acetaminophen think that the pain and misfortunes are not that much big of a deal.

"Empathy is important. If you are having an argument with your spouse and you just took acetaminophen, this research suggests you might be less understanding of what you did to hurt your spouse's feelings," said Baldwin Way, an assistant professor of psychology and member of the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center's Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research, and senior author of the study, in a statement.

For the study, the researchers conducted two experiments to determine if there is a difference in the level of empathy between those who took acetaminophen and those who took the placebo.

The first experiment involved 80 college students, with half of them taking 1,000 mg of acetaminophen. After waiting for an hour for the drug to take effect, the participants were asked to read eight short scenarios in which someone suffered some sort of pain rating the pain each person in the scenario experienced from one to five.

The second experiment involving 114 college students, with half of them also taking 1,000 mg of acetaminophen, was conducted in two parts.

In the first part, the participants were exposed four two-second blasts of white noise that ranged from 75 to 105 decibels. They were then asked to rate the noise blast from one to five. Meanwhile, on the second part of the experiment, participants watched, alone, an online game that purportedly involved three of the people they just met. In the game, two of the people the participants had met excluded the third person from the activity. Participants were then asked to rate how much pain and hurt feelings the students in the game felt, including the one who was excluded..

Each of the experiments wielded same results. Participants who took acetaminophen rated the scenarios as less severe and less unpleasant than those that did not take the medication.