As I sat in my assigned seat at the Stade de France to watch a game of Rugby, I noticed the excitement and uproar of the crowd. I had never seen a Rugby game before, but I was intrigued by all the thrill (see figure 1). The game began, and I immediately started to question people’s reactions to the players getting bumped, hit and basically “knocked-out.” As soon as a player had the ball, he ran until he was tackled. Numerous studies have isolated the effects of contact sports on the brain, and how repeated bumps to the head and concussions can lead to neurodegenerative disorders such as chronic traumatic encephalography (CTE) and dementia (Perrine, 2017). The neuroscientist in me wondered why people enjoyed and cheered to this brutality.
Figure 1. Me and Emily at Stade de France watching the rugby game
We all say that we hate violence, yet we keep consuming it as entertainment through movies, video games and sports. All of these demonstrate that there must be, to some level, a neural circuit that activates from this experience. Philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes described that lives of humans in their “natural condition” are “nasty, brutish, and short.” But is it the enjoyment of pain that we look for, or is there another common variable that makes us want to keep watching?
There is a thin line between pleasure and pain. When we process information about the self and close others, we share a conscious mental representation that is internal and felt physiologically (Gazzaniga, 2004). Another study by Qiao-Tasserit et al. 2017 found that contrary to the belief of “first-hand pain,” other’s pain produced lower neural activity in anterior insula and middle cingulate cortex following negative videos of others. Not only that, but they found that activity correlated when suffering was positive in terms of assigning value (see figure 2). Basically, you experience the adrenaline and pain just until you get the pleasure of realizing that it is not you. Like when you wince as someone twists their ankle, you may share their pain, but something in you enjoys that she/he is the one feeling it and not you.
Figure 2. Brain activity during first hand vs. others pain (Qiao-Tasserit et al. 2017)
In addition, studies have shown that when you perceive someone as being unfair, the empathy-associated brain regions (frontoinsular and ACC) reduce significantly (Singer, 2006). These reductions were also accompanied by increased activation in the ventral striatum and nucleus accumbens (reward areas). They enjoyed seeing the cheater in pain. Do we unconsciously label players in our minds to make them seem deserving? This may provide a sense of comfort, security, and control: a high that can even be addicting.
Gazzaniga, M. S. (2004). The cognitive neurosciences. MIT press.
Perrine, K., Helcer, J., Tsiouris, A. J., Pisapia, D. J., & Stieg, P. (2017). The current status of research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy. World neurosurgery, 102, 533-544.
Qiao-Tasserit, E., Corradi-Dell’Acqua, C., & Vuilleumier, P. (2017). The good, the bad, and the suffering. Transient emotional episodes modulate the neural circuits of pain and empathy. Neuropsychologia.
Singer, T., Seymour, B., O’doherty, J. P., Stephan, K. E., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D. (2006). Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others. Nature, 439(7075), 466.