We often describe our emotional reaction to social rejection as "pain." Does social rejection cause activity in areas of the brain that are known to be activated by physical pain? If it does, we really do experience social and physical pain in similar ways. Psychologists first included and then deliberately excluded individuals from a social activity while they measured changes in brain activity. After each activity, the subjects filled out questionnaires that assessed how excluded they felt. Here are data for 13 subjects:25

The explanatory variable is "social distress" measured by each subject's questionnaire score after exclusion relative to the score after inclusion. (So values greater than 1 show the degree of distress caused by exclusion.) The response variable is change in activity in a region of the brain that is activated by physical pain. Negative values show a decrease in activity, suggesting less distress. Discuss what the data show about the relationship between social distress and brain activity.

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SOCIAL DISTRESS 1.26 1.85 1.10 2.50 2.17 2.67 2.01 2.18 2.58 2.75 2.75 3.33 3.65 BRAIN ACTIVITY -0.055 0.040 0.026 -0.017 -0.017 0.017 0.021 0.025 0.027 0.033 0.064 0.077 0.124 SUBJECT 10 12 13