UNSW. Australia: The idea that we can achieve happiness by maximising pleasure and
minimising pain is both intuitive and popular. The truth is, however,
very different. Pleasure alone cannot make us happy.
Take
Christina Onassis, the daughter of shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
She inherited wealth beyond imagination and spent it on extravagant
pleasures in an attempt to alleviate her unhappiness. She died at 37 and
her biography, tellingly subtitled All the Pain Money Can Buy, recounts a life full of mind-boggling extravagance that contributed to her suffering.
Aldous Huxley recognised the possibility that endless pleasure may actually lead to dystopian societies in his 1932 novel Brave New World. Although the idea of endless pleasure seems idyllic, the reality is often very different.
We
need pain to provide a contrast for pleasure; without pain life becomes
dull, boring and downright undesirable. Like a chocoholic in a
chocolate shop, we soon forget what it was that made our desires so
desirable in the first place.
Emerging evidence suggests that pain
may actually enhance the pleasure and happiness we derive from life. As
my colleagues and I recently outlined in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review, pain promotes pleasure and keeps us connected to the world around us.
Pain builds pleasure
An
excellent example of how pain may enhance pleasure is the experience
commonly referred to as “the runners high”. After intense physical
exertion, runners experience a
sense of euphoria that has been linked to the production of opioids, a
neurochemical that is also released in response to pain.
Other work has shown that experiencing relief from pain not only increases our feelings of happiness but also reduces our feelings of
sadness. Pain may not be a pleasurable experience itself, but it builds
our pleasure in ways that pleasure alone simply cannot achieve.
Pain
may also make us feel more justified in rewarding ourselves with
pleasant experiences. Just think how many people indulge themselves a
little after a trip to the gym.
My colleagues and I tested this possibility by
asking people to hold their hand in a bucket of ice-water and then
offered them the choice of either a Caramello Koala or a florescent
highlighter to take with them as a gift.
Participants who did not
experience any pain chose the highlighter 74% of the time. But those who
had pain only chose it 40% of the time – they were more likely to take
the chocolate. Pain, it seems, can make chocolate guilt-free!
Pain connects us to our world
People
are constantly seeking new ways to clear their minds and connect with
their immediate experiences. Just think of the popularity of mindfulness and mediation exercises, both of which aim to bring us in touch with our direct experience of the world.
There is good reason to believe pain may be effective in achieving this same goal. Why? Because pain captures our attention.
Imagine
dropping a large book on your toe mid conversation. Would you finish
the conversation or attend to your toe? Pain drags us into the moment
and after pain we are more alert and attuned to our sensory environment –
less caught up in our thoughts about yesterday or tomorrow.
My colleagues and I recently tested whether
this effect of pain may also have some benefits. We asked people to eat
a Tim Tam chocolate biscuit after holding their hand in a bucket of
ice-cold water for as long as they could. We found that people who
experienced pain before eating the Tim Tam enjoyed it more than those
who did not have pain.
In two follow-up studies, we showed that
pain increases the intensity of a range of different tastes and reduces
people’s threshold for detecting different flavours. One reason people
enjoyed the Tim Tam more after pain was because it actually tasted
better – the flavour they experienced was more intense and they were
more sensitive to it.
Our findings shed light on why a Gatorade
tastes so much better after a long hard run, why a cold beer is more
pleasant after a day of hard labour, and why a hot chocolate is more
enjoyable after coming in from the cold.
Pain literally brings us
in touch with our immediate sensory experience of the world, allowing
for the possibility that pleasures can become more pleasant and more
intense.
Pain bond us with others
Anyone who has experienced a significant disaster will know that these events bring people together. Consider the 55,000 volunteers who helped clean up after the 2011 Brisbane floods or the sense of community spirit that developed in New York in response to 911.
Painful ceremonies have been used throughout history to create cooperation and cohesion within groups of people. A recent study examining
one such ritual – the kavadi in Mauritius – found that participants who
experienced pain were more likely to donate money to a community cause,
as were those who had simply observed the ceremony. The experience of
pain, or simply observing others in pain, made people more generous.
Building on this work, my colleagues and I had people experience pain in
groups. Across three studies, again, participants either immersed their
hand in ice-water and held a squat position for as long as they could,
or ate very hot raw chilies.
We compared these experiences to a
no-pain control condition and found pain increased cooperation within
the group. After sharing pain, people felt more bonded together and were
also more cooperative in an economic game: they were more likely to
take personal risks to benefit the group as a whole.
A different side of pain
Pain
is commonly associated with illness, injury or harm. Often we don’t see
pain until it is associated with a problem and in these cases pain may
have few benefits at all. Yet, we also experience pain in a range of
common and healthy activities.
Consider the recent ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) ice-bucket challenge. By dousing ourselves in ice water we were able to raise unprecedented support for a good cause.
Understanding
that pain can have a range of positive consequences is not only
important for better understanding pain, but may also help us manage
pain when it does become a problem. Framing pain as a positive, rather
than negative, increases neurochemical responses that help us better manage pain.
Dr Brock Bastian is an ARC Future Fellow in the UNSW School of Psychology