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Acetaminophen (Tylenol) reduces empathy?

Davidm

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I don't know about the credibility of this journal and I can only access the abstract. It's an interesting study, but obviously one study by itself is in no way conclusive. Could there be anything to this? It's certainly disturbing if true.
http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/05/27/scan.nsw057
In two double-blind placebo-controlled experiments, participants rated perceived pain, personal distress and empathic concern in response to reading scenarios about another's physical or social pain, witnessing ostracism in the lab, or visualizing another study participant receiving painful noise blasts. As hypothesized, acetaminophen reduced empathy in response to others’ pain.
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I wonder how many other painkillers they've ruled out? In other words, they've tested against placebos, but have they tested that the most common NSAIDS and opiates don't reduce empathy?

I'm curious what the mechanism might be. The first thing that occurred to me was people thinking, "well, my pain's not as big a deal as I thought, because it's better now, so those other people are probably overestimating their problems too." But that would hold true for any painkiller that worked, not just acetaminophen.

It's too early, I know, but I want to jump ahead and speculate why. :) Or at least see more tests to narrow down the phenomenon. Because that's pretty amazing if true, considering how frequently people take acetaminophen. I've tried to avoid it because of its stress on the liver. So I care deeply about you-all's problems. ;)
 
Regarding the mechanism. This quote is from the same abstract.
Simulation theories of empathy hypothesize that empathizing with others’ pain shares some common psychological computations with the processing of one’s own pain. Support for this perspective has largely relied on functional neuroimaging evidence of an overlap between activations during the experience of physical pain and empathy for other people’s pain.
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So it may be that by blocking the neural pathways that experience pain you're also blocking some that are involved with feeling empathy for other's pain. If so, then it seems like other painkillers may do the same.
 
As far as a real-life "empathy killer" is concerned, some have pointed critically to the proposed use of beta blockers to inhibit the formation of traumatic memories after combat. I could be biased because I take a beta blocker as a psychiatric medication and it barely does anything for me but that might well be embellishing things.
 
I don't understand Tylenol. The only time I would want an analgesic like that is under conditions in which Tylenol would tend to be hepatotoxic.
 
It's not even particularly terrible.

But there's only so much you can do to make a 47% ABV beverage taste good.
 
Pup said:
I wonder how many other painkillers they've ruled out? In other words, they've tested against placebos, but have they tested that the most common NSAIDS and opiates don't reduce empathy?
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I expect the results will be similar for anything with analgesic properties, which would include recreational drugs as well.

The model is that we may 'feel' empathy in part because the brain is running the simulation of the other's mind inside our own, through structures that can feel pain. Mitigating the pain would be mitigating the empathy.

This is consistent with research regarding 'crime facilitators', mostly meaning the use of recreational drugs to convert a person who is hesitating into a more enthusiastic participant. The classic case study was in the recruitment and management of Einsatzgruppen with alcohol, but there are more modern examples.
 
blutoski said:
I expect the results will be similar for anything with analgesic properties, which would include recreational drugs as well.

The model is that we may 'feel' empathy in part because the brain is running the simulation of the other's mind inside our own, through structures that can feel pain. Mitigating the pain would be mitigating the empathy.

This is consistent with research regarding 'crime facilitators', mostly meaning the use of recreational drugs to convert a person who is hesitating into a more enthusiastic participant. The classic case study was in the recruitment and management of Einsatzgruppen with alcohol, but there are more modern examples.
Click to expand...

Note: this is not me supporting the authors' findings, and not supporting any claim that tylenol use contributes to any measureable social problem. I think the scale of the effect is very trivial for this type of substance and dose.

Alcohol, however, is pretty well documented as an empathy suppressor, probably because one can up the dose so significantly to obtain a material effect, without actually killing the subject.
 
Have they done the study to test empathy of the pain killer vs being in pain? Pain tends to make me less empathic.

I wonder how tylenol stacks up to Prozac and other antidepressants for empathy and relief of depression.
 
Not impressed with an abstract that leaves out numbers of test subjects. Find out how big the study actually was or this is meaningless drivel.
 
I don't know why people always think bigger is better for sample size. Larger samples contribute to higher power but they also make it easier to find results that aren't practically significant.
 
On a related note, I don't see why including sample size directly in the abstract should be considered a sine qua non of good research.
 
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