ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the substantial linguistic, pharmacological, and neural evidence supporting the hypothesis that there is an overlap in the systems responsible for physical and social pain. In addition to this linguistic evidence, pharmacological studies provide further evidence of the overlap between physical and social pain by showing that both types of pain rely on shared neurochemistry. Neuroimaging studies using the Cyberball paradigm have also found that individual difference factors that are related to sensitivity to social pain also moderate neural responses to social exclusion. The overlap in neural activity across physical and social pain tasks in this study provides further support for the notion of shared neural circuitry between physical and social pain. Experimental work in healthy controls further supports this notion; individuals who are more sensitive to experimental physical pain also report higher levels of social pain in response to social exclusion.
