People With More Friends Have Higher Tolerance Level For Pain, New Study Reveals

Individuals with a larger group of friends are able to tolerate pain better, according to a new study. Researchers found that the brain's endorphin system might have developed to not only handle responses to physical discomfort but also influence experience of pleasure from social interactions.

"At an equivalent dose, endorphins have been shown to be stronger than morphine," said Katerina Johnson, doctoral student from the University of Oxford. "These results are also interesting because recent research suggests that the endorphin system may be disrupted in psychological disorders such as depression.  This may be part of the reason why depressed people often suffer from a lack of pleasure and become socially withdrawn."

To aid the study, the researchers analyzed the pain threshold and social networks of 101 adult volunteers in the age group of 18 to 34 years. Each participating individual was asked to fill out a questionnaire, which was specifically created to quiz the volunteers on friends they were in touch with weekly as well as monthly. The personality of each participant was also analyzed to observe traits like agreeableness as well as their stress and fitness levels. In addition, each volunteer was asked to undergo a simple but uncomfortable exercise so that the researchers could indirectly gauge their brains' endorphin activity. Incidentally, greater endorphin activity in the brain is related to higher pain tolerance.

On the basis of the experiment, it was found that both men and women volunteers with larger social groups had greater level of tolerance for pain. According to the researchers, it was more interesting to note that it was the number of friends contacted on a monthly, instead of a weekly basis, that played an important part in determining the results of the test.

Furthermore, the experts observed that though volunteers who had higher levels of fitness were able to endure the pain test for a longer duration, they had smaller social circles. Participants with high levels of stress were also found to have fewer friends; however, there was little correlation to pain. According to the researchers, at the moment it is not clear whether more social activity boosts the release of endorphins and consequently lowers the experience of pain, or whether individuals with a more active endorphin system, and a subsequent higher tolerance for pain, feel a greater reward from social activities and hence surround themselves with larger social networks.