ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Altruistic behaviors relieve physical pain.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 54 citations in OpenAlex.
- Nostalgia and Envisioning Reduce Pain Ratings in Healthy Adults and Individuals With Chronic Pain.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2026Article
- Self-Reported Altruism Is Positively Correlated With Anxiety, Depression, and Empathy Among Gazan Healthcare Workers During War: Validation of the Arabic 9-SRA in a High-Stress Context.Health science reports · 2025Article
- The neuroscience of itch in relation to transdiagnostic psychological approaches.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Benefit finding in chronic kidney disease patients receiving hemodialysis: a cross-sectional study.BMC nephrology · 2024Article
- Kidney Donor Perspectives on Acute Postoperative Pain Management.Clinical nursing research · 2023Article
- Prosocial and Positive Health Behaviors During a Period of Chronic Stress Protect Socioemotional Well-Being.Affective science · 2022Article
- How Can We Increase Pro-environmental Behavior During COVID-19 Pandemic? Focusing on the Altruistic (vs. Egoistic) Concerns.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- The influence of social signals on the self-experience of pain: A neuroimaging review.Frontiers in neurology · 2022Review
- Distinguishing the Roles of the Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex and Right Temporoparietal Junction in Altruism in Situations of Inequality: A Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Study.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2022Article
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging research in China.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2021Review
- Prosocial behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. The role of responsibility and vulnerability.Heliyon · 2021Article
- A Decision Architecture for Safety Computations.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2021Review
- Neural Responses of Benefiting From the Prosocial Exchange: The Effect of Helping Behavior.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- When altruists cannot help: the influence of altruism on the mental health of university students during the COVID-19 pandemic.Globalization and health · 2020Article
- Altruistic behaviors relieve physical pain.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Engaging in altruistic behaviors is costly, but it contributes to the health and well-being of the performer of such behaviors. The present research offers a take on how this paradox can be understood. Across 2 pilot studies and 3 experiments, we showed a pain-relieving effect of performing altruistic behaviors. Acting altruistically relieved not only acutely induced physical pain among healthy adults but also chronic pain among cancer patients. Using functional MRI, we found that after individuals performed altruistic actions brain activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and bilateral insula in response to a painful shock was significantly reduced. This reduced pain-induced activation in the right insula was mediated by the neural activity in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), while the activation of the VMPFC was positively correlated with the performer's experienced meaningfulness from his or her altruistic behavior. Our findings suggest that incurring personal costs to help others may buffer the performers from unpleasant conditions.
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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.