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Neural circuits mediating physical and social pain (e.g., responses to rejection) closely overlap (JW Psychiatry May 2 2011), and acetaminophen has been shown to reduce social pain. These investigators conducted two double-blind studies to assess acetaminophen's impact on another unpleasant emotion, distress accompanying unsettling uncertainties.
All participants were randomized to 1000-mg acetaminophen or placebo. Thirty minutes later, the volunteers experienced an unsettling, uncertainty-generating scenario or a control condition and then made judgments about imagined offenders (Study 1: 121 volunteers wrote briefly about what they imagined would happen to one's body after dying and related feelings or wrote about dental pain, and then set…