Schedule of Events | Symposia

The Effect of Acetaminophen on Cognitive and Emotional Pain Empathy

Poster Session D - Monday, March 31, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Casey Vojcek¹ (cvojcek@usca.edu), Tyler Robbins¹, Brittany Wrisley², Brittany Jones³, Laura Jelson-Swain⁴; ¹USCA

Empathy, encompassing cognitive and emotional components, is the capacity to interpret and even feel others' emotions, respectively. Empathy is critical for socialization and plays a fundamental role in human interactions. Acetaminophen, the active ingredient found in Tylenol, has been implicated in modulating social behaviors, potentially including empathy for pain. However, it is unknown if this effect translates to nociceptive pain, and whether there is a differentiation between cognitive and emotional facets of pain empathy. Therefore, participants (n = 127) were randomly assigned to either an experimental (1000mg acetaminophen) or control (sugar) group in a double-blind experimental design aimed to measure cognitive and emotional empathy in response to validated images depicting hands and feet in painful or non-painful scenarios. Trait empathy was also measured, and we verified data was not confounded by daily acetaminophen use or group assignment. A priori comparisons controlling for trait empathy found overall lower mean averages for emotional and cognitive empathy ratings. However, these were not significantly different between groups. Based on previous research suggesting sex differences in empathy, further analyses explored sex as an additional variable in the model. This revealed an interaction effect during the cognitive empathy task, such that males in the acetaminophen group reported less pain perceived from the images compared to males in the placebo group. Females did not differ in their responses between groups. This may suggest a sex-specific empathic effect in response to acetaminophen, and may further tease apart the potential differentiation between cognitive and emotional empathy neural processes.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotional responding