"If you have ever experienced proper rejection and that would be most of us it may stand out in your mind for a long time, like a boulder lodged in the landscape of memory. And it can hurt literally. The late anthropologist Helen Fisher, who studied human behaviour in the context of romantic love, showed that rejection and physical injury have much in common."
"In 2010 she led a study of people who had been recently rejected romantically. Functional MRI scans of their brains revealed that areas associated with distress and physical pain were more active. The passage of time did seem to reduce the pain response for Fisher's participants, but for some people rejection can resonate for months or years. This overlap in the brain's response to what we think of as physical and mental pain isn't limited to romance."
Rejection produces neural responses similar to physical pain. Brain imaging of recently rejected individuals shows increased activity in regions associated with distress and physical pain. Experimental social exclusion likewise activates neurocognitive mechanisms analogous to physical pain, signaling injury to social connections. The pain response often diminishes over time, but can persist for months or years for some people. Evolutionary forces made sensitivity to social exclusion adaptive because ancestral isolation increased mortality risk, producing a persistent human drive to seek acceptance and resist social exile. Modern environments reduce immediate survival threats from exile, but the psychological and physiological impact of rejection remains significant.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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