Why Does Rejection Hurt?
Why do rejection and social isolation hurt us so much? Why is the rejection that we receive from somebody who is the object of our affections perceived as an unbearable pain that we feel we can never overcome? We even express this sadness we feel as being a type of pain in our everyday language. We speak of “the pain of a broken heart” and of having “hurt feelings”. Why do we use these metaphors to express our feelings of discomfort? In a report published in the October 10 issue of Science (the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science), researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles presented results of an innovative study which demonstrated that the psychological discomfort experienced under conditions of social isolation is pain. Using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) techniques, they demonstrated that the same neural pathways and neurotransmitters that are involved in the perception of physical pain are also activated in exactly the
