The following is a summary of “Acute Ostracism-Related Pain Sensitization in the Context of Accumulated Lifetime Experiences of Ostracism,” published in the July 2023 issue of Pain by Nanavaty et al.

Ostracism, or social exclusion, is a type of social adversity that significantly affects an individual’s health and overall well-being. While laboratory research indicates that experimentally manipulated experiences of ostracism impact pain, the findings in the medical field have been inconclusive. Previous studies have failed to account for the moderating or main effects of individual histories of ostracism and have been restricted in the extent of their pain assessment.

In this medical study, individuals without pain disclosed their lifetime encounters with ostracism before a visit to the laboratory, where they were randomly assigned to undergo either a solitary occurrence of ostracism (acute ostracism) or a control condition. This was immediately followed by quantitative sensory testing. The findings suggest that the medical impact of a solitary occurrence of ostracism on pain assessments, post-sensations, and the accumulation of pain over time is influenced by the individual’s history of experiencing social exclusion. No primary effects were observed. For individuals with histories of increased lifetime ostracism, the experience of a solitary episode of ostracism resulted in heightened pain sensitization compared to the control condition. However, individuals with minimal lifetime exposure to ostracism exhibited no experimental effects. 

These findings suggest that individuals who experience acute ostracism may also experience periods of heightened sensitivity to pain if chronically ostracized. This implies that ostracism could influence how pain is perceived and sensitized in a social context. Stigmatized individuals may endure pain due to recurring and accumulating instances of ostracism. The findings indicate that individual examples of ostracism elicit central sensitization within the framework of collected lifetime encounters of ostracism. In this manner, ostracism can induce central sensitization and influence pain burden and disparity as determined by social and societal factors.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1526590023000548