![]() ![]() While further research is needed to look at a wider range of films and other influences, such as musical scores, Dunbar says the results suggest that watching traumatic films increases endorphin levels in the brain, boosting pain tolerance and increasing the sense of bonding with others in the group. “This is probably true of everyday life - some people get very moved emotionally by some event that happens while other people look blankly on and say ‘what is the fuss?’” said Dunbar. Some viewers showed a decrease in pain threshold, together with no change in their social bonding. What’s more, those who showed an increase in pain tolerance also had increased feelings of group bonding, despite their mood becoming less positive.īut not everyone showed an emotional response to Stuart: A life backwards. The upshot is that the traumatic film boosted pain thresholds by nearly 18% compared to the “control” scenario. They also found that, on average, the pain tolerance of those who watched the traumatic movie increased by 13.1%, whereas those who watched the documentaries experienced a decrease in pain threshold of 4.6%. The results reveal that those who watched the traumatic film had, on average, a strong negative change to their mood, while those who watched the documentaries showed only a slight change in both positive and negative markers, which the researchers attribute to boredom. “What one wants to know is does your response to one film change in a different way to your response to the other,” said Dunbar. With increased levels of pain tolerance linked to the release of potent pain-killing chemicals known as endorphins, the test offered scientists an indirect way of gauging changes to endorphin levels in the brain. A number of participants were also asked to complete an exercise to gauge their pain tolerance - the wall-sit test, involving squatting with their back against a wall for as long as possible. To explore the possibility, the researchers split 169 participants into groups composed largely of people they did not know, and showed them the traumatic drama Stuart: A life backwards which is based on the true story of a disabled, homeless drug addict and alcoholic.Ī control group of 68 individuals was shown, two documentaries back to back - one on natural history and the other on the geology and archaeology of Britain.īefore and after seeing the films, participants were asked to indicate through various scales their mood, together with their feelings of belonging towards other members of their group. Writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Dunbar and colleagues describe how they set out to unpick whether our love of storytelling, a device used to share knowledge and cultivate a sense of identity within a group, is underpinned by an endorphin-related bonding mechanism. “It has turned out that the same areas in the brain that deal with physical pain also handle psychological pain,” said Dunbar. “All of those things, including singing and dancing and jogging and laughter, all produce an endorphin kick for the same reason - they are putting the musculature of the body under stress,” said Dunbar.īeing harrowed, he adds, could have a similar effect. Previous research has found that laughing together, dancing together and working in a team can increase social bonding and heighten pain tolerance through an endorphin boost. “The argument here is that actually, maybe the emotional wringing you get from tragedy triggers the endorphin system,” said Robin Dunbar, a co-author of the study and professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford.
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