Thinking about death can cause us to feel a sort of existential angst that isn’t attributable to a specific source. Now, new research suggests that acetaminophen, an over-the-counter pain medication, may help to reduce this existential pain.

The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

According to lead researcher Daniel Randles and colleagues at the From hockey riots to David Lynch films, a new study explores the causes and potential remedy for existential dread. Credit University of British Columbia[/caption], the new findings suggest that Tylenol may have more profound psychological effects than previously thought:

“Pain extends beyond tissue damage and hurt feelings, and includes the distress and existential angst we feel when we’re uncertain or have just experienced something surreal. Regardless of the kind of pain, taking Tylenol seems to inhibit the brain signal that says something is wrong.”

Randles and colleagues knew from previous research that when the richness, order, and meaning in life is threatened — with thoughts of death, for instance — people tend to reassert their basic values as a coping mechanism.

The researchers also knew that both physical and social pain — like bumping your head or being ostracized from friends — can be alleviated with acetaminophen. Randles and colleagues speculated that the existentialist suffering we face with thoughts of death might involve similar brain processes. If so, they asked, would it be possible to reduce that suffering with a simple pain medicine?

The researchers had participants take either Tylenol brand acetaminophen or a sugar pill placebo in a double-blind study. One group of participants was asked to write about what would happen to their body after they die, and the control group was asked to write about having dental pain, an unpleasant but not existentially distressing thought.

All the participants were then asked to read an arrest report about a prostitute, and to set the amount for bail.

Just as expected, the control group that wrote about dental pain — who weren’t made to feel an existentialist threat — gave relatively low bail amounts, only about $300. They didn’t feel the need to assert their values.

On the other hand, the participants who wrote about their own death and were given a sugar pill gave over $500 for bail — about 40% more than the dental pain group, in line with previous studies. They responded to the threat on life’s meaning and order by affirming their basic values, perhaps as a coping mechanism.

But, the participants in this group who took Tylenol were not nearly as harsh in setting bail. These results suggest that their existential suffering was ‘treated’ by the headache drug.

A second study confirmed these results using video clips. People who watched a surreal video by director David Lynch and took the sugar pill judged a group of rioters following a hockey game most harshly, while those who watched the video and took Tylenol were more lenient.

The study demonstrates that existentialist dread is not limited to thinking about death, but might generalize to any scenario that is confusing or surprising — such as an unsettling movie.

“We’re still taken aback that we’ve found that a drug used primarily to alleviate headaches can also make people numb to the worry of thinking about their deaths, or to the uneasiness of watching a surrealist film,” says Randles.

The researchers believe that these studies may have implications for clinical interventions down the road.

“For people who suffer from chronic anxiety, or are overly sensitive to uncertainty, this work may shed some light on what is happening and how their symptoms could be reduced,” Randles concludes.

Sex apparently is like income: People are generally happy when they keep pace with the Joneses and they’re even happier if they get a bit more.

That’s one finding of Tim Wadsworth, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder, who recently published the results of a study of how sexual frequency corresponds with happiness.

As has been well documented with income, the happiness linked with having more sex can rise or fall depending on how individuals believe they measure up to their peers, Wadsworth found.

His paper, “Sex and the Pursuit of Happiness: How Other People’s Sex Lives are Related to Our Sense of Well-Being,” was published in the February edition of Social Indicators Research.

Using national survey data and statistical analyses, Wadsworth found that people reported steadily higher levels of happiness as they reported steadily higher sexual frequency. But he also found that even after controlling for their own sexual frequency, people who believed they were having less sex than their peers were unhappier than those who believed they were having as much or more than their peers.

“There’s an overall increase in sense of well-being that comes with engaging in sex more frequently, but there’s also this relative aspect to it,” he said. “Having more sex makes us happy, but thinking that we are having more sex than other people makes us even happier.”

Wadsworth analyzed data from the General Social Survey, which has been taking the “pulse of America” since 1972. All respondents in all years are asked whether they are “very happy, pretty happy or not too happy.”

The survey has included questions about sexual frequency since 1989. Wadsworth’s sample included 15,386 people who were surveyed between 1993 and 2006.

After controlling for many other factors, including income, education, marital status, health, age, race and other characteristics, respondents who reported having sex at least two to three times a month were 33 percent more likely to report a higher level of happiness than those who reported having no sex during the previous 12 months.

The happiness effect appears to rise with frequency. Compared to those who had no sex in the previous year, those reporting a once-weekly frequency were 44 percent more likely to report a higher level of happiness. Those reporting having sex two to three times a week are 55 percent more likely to report a higher level of happiness.

But while personal income can be inferred by a neighbor’s flashy new car or home renovation, sex is a more cloistered activity. So how do, say, men or women in their 20s know how frequently their peers have sex?

Though sex is a private matter, the mass media and other sources of information provide clues. For instance, Wadsworth noted, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal and The AARP Magazine — with a combined circulation of 30 million—frequently report the results of their own or others’ sex surveys.

Television and film depictions might also play a role, and, Wadsworth writes, “there is plenty of evidence that information concerning normative sexual behavior is learned through discussions within peer groups and friendship networks.”

As a result of this knowledge, if members of a peer group are having sex two to three times a month but believe their peers are on a once-weekly schedule, their probability of reporting a higher level of happiness falls by about 14 percent, Wadsworth found.

Wadsworth is also a research associate at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Behavioral Science and his research interests include the general study of happiness.

He noted that the data do not necessarily prove that social comparisons cause the effects he observed. However, “I can’t think of a better explanation for why how much sex other people are having would influence a person’s happiness,” he said.

The way most people engage in social comparison can be problematic, he noted. “We’re usually not looking down and therefore thinking of ourselves as better off, but we’re usually looking up and therefore feeling insufficient and inadequate.”

On the other hand, people are social creatures and any sense of self or identity is dependent on others. In his introductory sociology classes, Wadsworth asks students to write three adjectives, any adjectives, to describe themselves.

“And then I ask them, ‘Do your adjectives have any meaning whatsoever if you’re alone on a desert island, in the sense that there’s no one to compare yourself to?’ ”

Regardless of the adjective — attractive, smart, funny, poor — “these things are meaningful only if there’s some sense of what other people are like,” he said. “As such, we can only be wealthy if others are poor, or sexually active if others are inactive.”

ᔥUniversity of Colorado Boulder

Researchers at McGill University’s Psychology Dept. has been able to show that playing and listening to music has clear benefits for both mental and physical health. In particular, music was found both to improve the body’s immune system function and to reduce levels of stress. Listening to music was also found to be more effective than prescription drugs in reducing anxiety prior to surgery.

“We’ve found compelling evidence that musical interventions can play a health care role in settings ranging from operating rooms to family clinics,” says Prof. Levitin. “But even more importantly, we were able to document the neurochemical mechanisms by which music has an effect in four domains: management of mood, stress, immunity and as an aid to social bonding.”

Indeed, the information gathered as part of this first large-scale review of the literature showed that music increased both immunoglobulin A, an antibody that plays a critical role in immunity of the mucous system, and natural killer cell counts (the cells that attack invading germs and bacteria). Levitin and his postgraduate research fellow, Dr. Mona Lisa Chanda, also found that listening to and playing music reduces levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, in the body.

The authors suggest a number of areas for future experiments in the field. These include uncovering the connection between oxytocin, the so-called “love drug”, group affiliation and music; administering the drug naltrexone (an opioid antagonist used during alcohol withdrawal) to uncover whether musical pleasure is promoted by the same chemical systems in the brain activated by other forms of pleasure such as food; and experiments in which patients are randomly assigned to musical intervention or a rigorously matched control condition in post-operative or chronic pain trials. Suitable controls might include films, TV, comedy recordings, or audio books.
Finally, the authors lay out a framework for future research with questions such as are the beneficial effects of music due to distraction, mood induction, feelings of social bonding/support, or other factors? What are the different effects, if any, of playing vs. listening to music? Are some people more likely to experience positive effects of music than others? If so, what individual differences (e.g. personality traits, genetic or biological factors) contribute to the effectiveness of music interventions? What is the role of oxytocin, “the love drug” in mediating musical experience? What stimuli can be used as a basis of comparison to match music along dimensions of arousal, attractiveness or lack thereof, engagement, and mood induction?The research was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

To read the article/ an abstract of the article: Trends in Cognitive Science: http://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/

ᔥ McGill University