The Effect Of Ritual Actions On Social Pain And Physcial Pain

Pain is a complex physiological and psychological process.Both physical pain and social pain belong to pain experience.Excessive physical pain and social pain will bring painful experience to people which will do great harms to people.Therefore,it is of great significance to carry out research on how to prevent and relieve physical and social pain.Ritual pervades human life,which is a symbolic activity consisting of action sequences often characterized by repetition,rigidity and redundancy,but these action sequences lack direct instrumental purposes.Ritual's symbolic meaning is usually abstract,sometimes private,so it is difficult for others to perceive its meaning.Howerer,the action sequences of the ritual,as the external expression of ritual,are concrete and can be manipulated.Therefore,almost all the empirical researches on ritual study ritual actionst.Recent studies have found that rituals can reduce negative emotions such as high anxiety,high stress,and sadness,and also can improve the sense of control.When people suffer from social pain(such as social exclusion),they are often indulged in negative emotions such as sadness,anger,and a low sense of control.In addition,a large number of studies have shown that physical pain and social pain share a common neurophysiological mechanism,and people who suffer from physical pain may also be accompanied by some negative emotions and a low sense of control.Rituals are likely to reduce people's social and physical pain to a large extent,but no empirical research have directly explored the relationship between rituals and these two kinds of pain.Therefore,based on the repetitive,rigid and non-functional characteristics of ritual actions,this study created a new series of ritual actions in the laboratory to explore whether ritual actions can reduce social and physical pain.In Study 1,the social exclusion paradigm—Cyberball was used to induce social pain.The scores of the basic needs satisfication and emotional states,as well as the physiological changes in the skin electrical level were collected as indicators of social pain.Study 1 aimed to explore the preventive effect(Experiment 1a)and relief effect(Experiment 1b)of ritual actions on social pain Both Experiment 1a and Experiment1 b used a single-factor between-subject design,including three conditions: ritual actions,random actions,and no actions.In Experiment 1a,the participants needed to finish certain "actions" before the social exclusion task.The results revealed that compared with the random actions and no actions group,participants in the ritual actions group reported a higher basic needs satisfaction scores and lower negative emotions,and the change rate of physiological skin electricity(compared with baseline period)was lower during social exclusion task,that is,their physiological arousal was lower in ritual actions group.There was no significant difference in all indicators of social pain between random actions and no actions groups.The subjective reported indicators of social pain were consistent with the indicators of physiological skin electricity,These results showed that performing ritual actions before social exclusion task could reduce the pain caused by social exclusion,that is,ritual actions could effectively prevent social pain.In Experiment 1b,the participant needed to perform certain actions after the social exclusion task.The results revealed that: the total score of basic needs satisfaction in the ritual actions group was significantly higher than thart in the no actions group,and it was marginal significantly higher than that in the random actions group.The positive emotions in the ritual actions group were significantly higher than those in the random actions group and the no actions group,and scores of negative emotions were of no difference in three groups.In the recovery period,the change rate of skin electricity in the ritual actions group(compared to the baseline period)was significantly lower than that of the random actions group,and was marginal significantly lower than that of the no actions group,that is,the physiological arousal recovered more fastly to the baseline level after performing the ritual actions;There was no significant difference in all indicators of social pain between the randomactions group and the no actions group.These results indicated that performing ritual actions after social exclusion task could alleviate the pain caused by social exclusion to a certain extent,that is,ritual actions could also alleviate social pain.In Study 2,the cold pressure test was used to induce physical pain,The pain intensity reported by participants and tolerance time of cold pressure were used as indicators of physical pain.Study 2 aimed to explore the preventive effect of ritual actions on physical pain(Experiment 2).Experiment 2 also used a single-factor between-subject design,including three conditions: ritual actions,random actions,and no actions.In Experiment 2,the participants needed to finish certain "actions" before suffering from cold pressure,The results revealed that: compared with random actions and no actions groups,participants in the ritual actions group reported lower pain intensity and had longer pain tolerance times.There was no significant difference in all the indicators of physical pain between the random actions group and the no actions group.We also measured the participants' self-efficacy of pain after certain actions were finished but before cold pressure test.It was found that self-efficacy of pain in the ritual actions group was significantly higher than those of the other two groups,and the self-efficacy of pain fully mediated the effect of ritual actions on pain tolerance times.These results indicated that performing ritual actions before cold pressure task could reduce the pain intensity,and could enhance pain tolerance by increasing the self-efficacy of pain.Based on the results of the above three experiments,this study concluded that:ritual actions could effectively prevent and relieve social pain caused by social exclusion;ritual actions could effectively prevent physical pain,reduce individual's pain intensity and enhance pain tolerance by improving self-efficacy of pain.