Trial reportSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2016
From painkiller to empathy killer: acetaminophen (paracetamol) reduces empathy for pain.
Trial report in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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
48 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Social pain: A systematic review on interventions.F1000Research · 2025Pooled it
- Social comparison in the brain: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies on the downward and upward comparisons.Human brain mapping · 2018Pooled it
- Shared effects of the opioid antagonist naltrexone on first-hand and empathic pain.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2026Trial
- High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Improves Pain Empathy: A Randomized, Double-Blind, and Sham-Controlled Study Based on Event-Related Potentials (ERPs).Journal of pain research · 2025Trial
- Beyond Sharing Unpleasant Affect-Evidence for Pain-Specific Opioidergic Modulation of Empathy for Pain.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2021Trial
- 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
- Effects of opioid- and non-opioid analgesics on responses to psychosocial stress in humans.Hormones and behavior · 2018Trial
- The Anterior Cingulate Cortex and Prosocial Behavior toward Others in Negative State.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Article
- Randomized open-label non-inferiority trial of paracetamol or celecoxib for patients with chronic low back pain.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The social origins of consciousness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Autistic and Non-autistic Children's Pain Perception is Modulated by Their First-Hand Pain Sensitivity and Theory of Mind.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2024Article
- Associations between over-the-counter analgesics usage and symptoms of anxiety and depression in adolescents: a network analysis.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Intranasal Oxytocin and Pain Reduction: Testing a Social Cognitive Mediation Model.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- A pill as a quick solution: association between painkiller intake, empathy, and prosocial behavior.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Cognitive exertion affects the appraisal of one's own and other people's pain.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Autistic Traits and Empathy for Others' Pain Among the General Population: Test of the Mediating Effects of First-Hand Pain Sensitivity.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Simulation theories of empathy hypothesize that empathizing with others' pain shares some common psychological computations with the processing of one's own pain. Support for this perspective has largely relied on functional neuroimaging evidence of an overlap between activations during the experience of physical pain and empathy for other people's pain. Here, we extend the functional overlap perspective to the neurochemical level and test whether a common physical painkiller, acetaminophen (paracetamol), can reduce empathy for another's pain. In two double-blind placebo-controlled experiments, participants rated perceived pain, personal distress and empathic concern in response to reading scenarios about another's physical or social pain, witnessing ostracism in the lab, or visualizing another study participant receiving painful noise blasts. As hypothesized, acetaminophen reduced empathy in response to others' pain. Acetaminophen also reduced the unpleasantness of noise blasts delivered to the participant, which mediated acetaminophen's effects on empathy. Together, these findings suggest that the physical painkiller acetaminophen reduces empathy for pain and provide a new perspective on the neurochemical bases of empathy. Because empathy regulates prosocial and antisocial behavior, these drug-induced reductions in empathy raise concerns about the broader social side effects of acetaminophen, which is taken by almost a quarter of adults in the United States each week.
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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.