The Price Of Pain And The Value Of Suffering
April 23, 2009
During these trying financial times, the cost of healthcare and how much we are
willing to pay for it is at the top of our economic concerns. The financial
value of pain has a wide ranging influence, affecting drug prices and injury
compensation. But what about on an individual level is it possible to place a
value on our health, to prevent pain and suffering? University College London
psychologists Ivo Vlaev and Nick Chater, and neuroscientists Ben Seymour and
Raymond J. Dolan were interested in just how much money volunteers were willing
to pay to avoid pain and discomfort.
Study participants were given money, with the understanding that they could keep
for themselves whatever cash remained. They experienced one pulse of electric
shock and then had to indicate how much money they would pay in order to avoid
receiving 15 more shocks of the same intensity. Then, a computer program would
determine how much the volunteers would actually have to pay. The program would
randomly select a dollar amount if that amount was higher than what the
participants were willing to pay, then the participants would be shocked.
However, if the computer's price was lower than the participant's price, then
they would pay the computer's price and avoid the pain. The volunteers were
informed that the computer selection would be completely random, so it was
really in their best interest to select a price that accurately reflected how
they value the pain from the electric shock. For each volunteer, this process
was repeated a number of times, with differing intensities of shocks.
The results, described in Psychological Science, a journal of the
Association for Psychological Science, reveal that demand for pain relief is
almost completely dependent on pain experienced in the recent past and the
available cash on hand. That is, the participants were willing to pay more money
to avoid pain if that pain was more intense compared to previous trials. In
addition, the price they were willing to pay was based on what they were given
(money-in-the-pocket) rather than on their overall wealth.
These findings suggest that the value we place on relief from suffering is
flexible and that activity of health markets cannot be predicted by the behavior
of individuals. This is the first scientific study showing that our reaction
towards pain is a relative judgment, based on our previous experience with that
pain. The authors conclude that pain is a major health issue and with around $60
billion spent on painkillers worldwide each year, they note that these findings
"are likely to have substantial economic implications."
Psychological Science is ranked among the top 10 general psychology
journals for impact by the Institute for Scientific Information.
Source: Association for Psychological Science
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