Forgiveness and Acetaminophen as Pain Relievers

Much has been written about the power of forgiveness to help people reduce their current distress from hurts, which may have lasted for years. Studies have demonstrated that forgiveness has biological correlates related to stress. The hurts addressed by forgiveness have been called "social pain."

Acetaminophen is a commonly used effective medication for physical pain. A new study by George Slavich and his colleagues looks at the interaction of forgiveness and acetaminophen on the reduction of social pain. Their article is an editor's choice selection in the current Annals of Behavioral Medicine (December, 2019).

Following is a quote from their article abstract.

Results
As hypothesized, acetaminophen reduced participants’ social pain levels over time but only for those exhibiting high levels of forgiveness (i.e., 18.5% reduction in social pain over 20 days).
Conclusions
These data are the first to show that forgiveness and acetaminophen have interactive effects on experiences of social pain, which is one of the most common and impactful of all human experiences.

Read more about the Psychology of Forgiveness


See the article link above for details of the study in Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

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