Does social rejection hurt? We often describe our emotional reaction to social rejection as “pain.” Does social rejection cause activity in areas of the brain that are known to be activated by physical pain? If it does, we really do experience social and physical pain in similar ways. Psychologists first included and then deliberately excluded individuals from a social activity while they measured changes in brain activity.

After each activity, the subjects filled out questionnaires that assessed how excluded they felt. The table below shows data for 13 subjects.9 “Social distress” is measured by each subject’s questionnaire score after exclusion relative to the score after inclusion. (So values greater than 1 show the degree of distress caused by exclusion.) “Brain activity” is the change in activity in a region of the brain that is activated by physical pain. (So positive values show more pain.)

Subject Social distress Brain activity 1 1.26 −0.055 2 1.85 −0.040 3 1.10 −0.026 4 2.50 −0.017 5 2.17 −0.017 6 2.67 0.017 7 2.01 0.021 8 2.18 0.025 9 2.58 0.027 10 2.75 0.033 11 2.75 0.064 12 3.33 0.077 13 3.65 0.124 Make a scatterplot to display the relationship between social distress and brain activity. Describe what you see.