Sensitizing the Behavioral-Immune System: The Power of Social Pain

People who believe they are invulnerable to infectious diseases often fail protect themselves against the disease threats that others pose them. The current paper hypothesizes social pain—the experience of feeling interpersonally hurt or rejected—can sensitize behavioral-immune system by giving people added reason see as worthy protecting against. We obtained four daily diary samples involving 2,794 participants reported how hurt/rejected felt those knew, personally concerned were about spread illness/COVID-19, and vigilantly engaged in self-protective behaviors safeguard their health each day. An integrative data analysis revealed robust evidence believed more concerted efforts greater risk contracting COVID-19 when being acute pain gave them harmful