Personal Relationships, (2014). Printed in the United States of America. Copyright © 2014 IARR; DOI: 10.1111/pere.12036 Reducing social pain: Sex differences in the impact of physical pain relievers ANITA L. VANGELISTI, a JAMES W. PENNEBAKER, a NICHOLAS BRODY, b AND TREY D. GUINN c a University of Texas at Austin; b University of Puget Sound; and c University of the Incarnate Word Abstract There is evidence that social pain or “hurt feelings” and physical pain share the same neural system. Although researchers have found that a physical pain reliever can reduce social pain, studies suggest that sex differences may infuence these fndings. Our results indicate that women who took ibuprofen felt less hurt or social pain when they were excluded from a game and when they relived a painful experience than did women who took a placebo. Men who took the pain reliever, by contrast, felt more hurt in both situations than did those who took the placebo. Further, the sex difference revealed in men’s and women’s ratings of their social pain was refected in their open-ended verbal descriptions of social and physical pain. We have long been taught to think of social pain and physical pain as separate phenomena (only “sticks and stones can break your bones”). Yet there is growing sentiment among scholars that social pain—or hurt feelings—and phys- ical pain are more closely related than previ- ously thought. Indeed, some have argued that the two types of pain share the same neu- ral system (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004; MacDonald & Leary, 2005). Evidence support- ing this argument is compelling: Researchers Anita L. Vangelisti, Department of Communication Stud- ies, University of Texas at Austin; James W. Pennebaker, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin; Nicholas Brody, Department of Communication Studies, University of Puget Sound; Trey D. Guinn, Department of Communication Arts, University of the Incarnate Word. The third and fourth authors’ names are listed in alpha- betical order. The authors would like to thank Rebecca Kurlak for her help in collecting data and Renee Acosta, Nancy Eisenberger, and Kip Williams for their guidance on the study. We also are indebted to Julie Fitness and two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback on our work. Correspondence should be addressed to Anita L. Vangelisti, Department of Communication Studies, Uni- versity of Texas at Austin, TX 78712, e-mail: vange- listi@austin.utexas.edu. have found that the neuroimaging data asso- ciated with social pain are similar in some ways to those associated with physical pain (Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003) and that acetaminophen, a medication com- monly used to relieve physical pain, reduced people’s reports of the amount of social pain they experienced over a 3-week period of time (DeWall et al., 2010). Although the link between social and physi- cal pain has been well received, research on the way women and men experience pain suggests that it should be qualifed (Dao & LeResche, 2000; Wiesenfeld-Hallin, 2005). The associa- tion between social and physical pain may be experienced and expressed in different ways by men and women. More specifcally, there may be sex differences in the degree to which physical pain relievers reduce social pain. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether there are sex differences in the effect of physical pain relievers on people’s experi- ence of social pain and to test how those differ- ences are manifest. Three distinct indicators of social pain were examined: (a) acute responses to a socially painful experience, (b) responses 1