In praise of the Stiff Upper Lip?

"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so" said the tragic hero Hamlet. It seems he may have had a point, if by “good” we assume he means painful (rather than the non-natural property the word “good” should refer to).

This is the impression one can get from the following passages from The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich, where the pain one feels is influenced by other people’s reactions.

This could give rise to interesting dynamics in some cases, such as where people claim that a given speech act, hitherto seen as innocuous, can hurt feelings. Initially this claim will be seen as bizarre, but due to cultural learning it can become self-fulfilling.

Parents, like me, have probably had the experience of watching their child fall and then look up at them for a reaction. If the parent has a smile or looks unconcerned, the child may just stand up and press on. If the parent flashes a grimace, empathetically feeling the fall, the kid is more likely to burst into tears and need a hug.

My UBC colleague, the psychologist Ken Craig, has directly tested the relationship between cultural learning and pain. Ken’s team first exposed research participants to a series of electric shocks that gradually increased in intensity and thus painfulness. Some participants observed another person—a “tough-model”—experience the same shocks right after them, and some did not. Both the participant and model had to rate how painful the shock was each time. The tough model, however, was secretly working for the experimenter and always rated the pain about 25% less painful than the participant did.

Those who saw the tough model showed (1) declining measurements of electrodermal skin potential, meaning that their bodies stopped reacting to the threat, (2) lower and more stable heart rates, and (3) lower stress ratings. Cultural learning from the tough model changed their physiological reactions to electric shocks. The effect of observing a tough model and inferring their underlying experience is a more potent inducer of placebo effects than mere verbal suggestions. In fact, it’s about as effective as direct conditioning. (pp. 275-276)