Can Tylenol cure dread?

To see how the pain killer affected their sense of unease, the volunteers were then asked to consider setting bail for a woman arrested for prostitution. Prior studies showed that thinking about death or facing strange and unexpected situations or circumstances tends to make people seek certainty and meaning as a way of compensating for their anxiety over the unknown and unfamiliar. One way to do this is by upholding moral norms. So after people consider their own death, for example, they tend to be more punitive when asked to make sentencing decisions regarding crime. If thinking about death had provoked unsettling uncertainty, setting a higher bail could re-affirm a moral certainty, reducing the ambiguity. “Focusing on things that still make sense makes them feel better,” explains Randles, suggesting that reinforcing conventional morality “downregulates this anxiety.”

And, in fact, those who thought about dental pain showed no difference in the bail values they set for the prostitute, whether they took placebo or Tylenol. They faced no uncertainty or anxiety. But for those who had contemplated their own death, the Tylenol seemed to make a difference. Those who took the pain-killer set a bail of $313 while those given placebo went up to $443. The Tylenol somehow reduced anxious compensation.