Poverty Hurts

A new wave of newly minted college grads are hoping to enter the workforce this summer, and their prospects aren't looking good. The recession is taking a toll, and many of these young people may be leaving the comfortable cocoon of campus life to face a doubly painful reality of job rejection and financial hardship.

Their pain is not just metaphorical. Psychologists have been studying the connections between social and economic suffering, and an emerging theory suggests that these experiences are intertwined. What's more, the sting of rejection and the pain of poverty may be further linked to the body's physical pain perceptions. Which means we may literally ache for money and just as literally feel the sting of poverty.

Three psychologists recently explored the psychological meaning of money in the laboratory. Xinyue Zhou, Kathleen Vohs and Roy Baumeister ran a series of experiments to examine the complex interplay of earning or losing money, social acceptance or rejection and very real pain. Here's an example of their work:

The psychologists used a ruse to prime volunteers' thoughts about money. The testgivers told subjects that they were taking part in a dexterity test, in which half of them counted pieces of paper and the other half counted a stack of $100 bills, a lab task well known to activate the idea of earning and having money. Then they ran two experiments. In one, the volunteers all took part in a pain-tolerance test, which involved dipping the volunteers' fingers in very hot water. In another, they participated in a computerized ball-tossing game, which had been set up to shun certain players—much like kids are ostracized on the playground.

The idea was to see if being flush with cash would lead to less painful feelings of rejection—and if it would salve actual physical suffering as well. It did both, unmistakably. Those who had counted real C-notes reported less pain—both social and physical—than did those who had just counted paper.

What's going on here? Well, the psychologists' theory is that social pain is merely a modern version of more basic physical pain. Our ancient brain evolved a pain detector to warn us away from peril, and as we became social animals, the emotional pain detector was piggy-backed on top. The modern brain mixes them up. They further speculate that money is a social resource, interchangeable with popularity. Having money increases people's confidence in their ability to negotiate their social world. So having money bolsters self-esteem and defuses the pain of ostracism—and in the process diminishes actual pain.