Trial reportPsychological science2015
Over-the-Counter Relief From Pains and Pleasures Alike: Acetaminophen Blunts Evaluation Sensitivity to Both Negative and Positive Stimuli.
Trial report in Psychological science, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 85 citations in OpenAlex.
- Electrocortical Effects of Acetaminophen during Emotional Picture Viewing, Cognitive Control, and Negative Feedback.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2021Trial
- Effects of acetaminophen on risk taking.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2020Trial
- Alleviating Social Pain: A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial of Forgiveness and Acetaminophen.Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · 2019Trial
- Acetaminophen enhances the reflective learning process.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2018Trial
- Effect of Ibuprofen on BrainAGE: A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Dose-Response Exploratory Study.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2018Trial
- Efficacy and Safety of Analgesic Treatment for Depression in People with Advanced Dementia: Randomised, Multicentre, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial (DEP.PAIN.DEM).Drugs & aging · 2018Trial
- From painkiller to empathy killer: acetaminophen (paracetamol) reduces empathy for pain.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2016Trial
- Post-error slowing is modulated by emotional words.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Loneliness and social isolation as predictors of pain medication use transitions in older adults.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Over-the-counter but not harmless: Paracetamol abuse in a benzodiazepine user.Indian journal of psychiatry · 2025Article
- Acetaminophen's Role in Autism and ADHD: A Mitochondrial Perspective.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- High-dose IV acetaminophen reduces delirium risk in older adults with acute abdominal conditions: a retrospective cohort study.Journal of pharmaceutical health care and sciences · 2025Article
- Evaluating the Role of Susceptibility Inducing Cofactors and of Acetaminophen in the Etiology of Autism Spectrum Disorder.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Associations between over-the-counter analgesics usage and symptoms of anxiety and depression in adolescents: a network analysis.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Acetaminophen causes neurodevelopmental injury in susceptible babies and children: no valid rationale for controversy.Clinical and experimental pediatrics · 2024Article
- The Dangers of Acetaminophen for Neurodevelopment Outweigh Scant Evidence for Long-Term Benefits.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- A pill as a quick solution: association between painkiller intake, empathy, and prosocial behavior.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The heavy-tailed valence hypothesis: the human capacity for vast variation in pleasure/pain and how to test it.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Effects of Acute Drug Administration on Emotion: A Review of Pharmacological MRI Studies.Current addiction reports · 2021Article
- Can paracetamol lower stress and anxiety by blunting emotions during and after computer guided dental implant surgeries? Findings from a randomized crossover clinical trial.Journal of dental sciences · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Acetaminophen, an effective and popular over-the-counter pain reliever (e.g., the active ingredient in Tylenol), has recently been shown to blunt individuals' reactivity to a range of negative stimuli in addition to physical pain. Because accumulating research has shown that individuals' reactivity to both negative and positive stimuli can be influenced by a single factor (an idea known as differential susceptibility), we conducted two experiments testing whether acetaminophen blunted individuals' evaluations of and emotional reactions to both negative and positive images from the International Affective Picture System. Participants who took acetaminophen evaluated unpleasant stimuli less negatively and pleasant stimuli less positively, compared with participants who took a placebo. Participants in the acetaminophen condition also rated both negative and positive stimuli as less emotionally arousing than did participants in the placebo condition (Studies 1 and 2), whereas nonevaluative ratings (extent of color saturation in each image; Study 2) were not affected by drug condition. These findings suggest that acetaminophen has a general blunting effect on individuals' evaluative and emotional processing, irrespective of negative or positive valence.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.