Empathy is the ability for so-called “normal” people who possess consciences to be able to feel another person’s emotional distress or pain. A recently published study, however, has raised doubts concerning an over the counter pain medication in that it may reduce the ability to employ empathy.
It is known as acetaminophen and is the common ingredient found in many of the over the counter pain relief medications. For the most part, it is used to reduce swelling and combat pain. About a quarter of the American population takes it in one form or another every week. That comes out to about 52 million Americans.
The research was done by a team at Ohio State University and has been published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. The researchers first tested 80 college students. Their results concluded that acetaminophen affects how people feel societal and emotional pain in others. The researchers are suggesting that the drug inhibits empathy in those that take it.
The empathy experiment, under the influence of the drug, was that the students were asked to read two different stories. The researchers say that those who took the acetaminophen has much lower levels of empathy for the characters in the stories that were experience physical and emotional pain than those that didn’t take the drug first.
The second experiment exposed 144 students to a high ear piercing, high decibel level, noise. The ones who took the drug had no problem with the noise and didn’t seemed concerned that it bothered the ones who took the placebo. Next up, the researchers plan on running the same tests with the common pain killer, ibuprophen.
PHOTO CREDIT: Reuters