Handling Cash Relieves Pain

Geezer isn't ready to swear off ibuprofen, but he's wondering how a minor sprain might respond to a few minutes of fondling twenty dollar bills. Nature reports that researchers at the University in Guangzhou in China ran half a dozen experiments with students, to test how subconscious thoughts of
gaining or losing money affected their resistance to both the pain of
social rejection and the pain of immersing their fingers in hot water. In both cases, the money talked. In one experiment, students were divided into two groups. One group was told to perform a finger dexterity test which required them to handle money. The other group performed a similar test that required them to handle blank pieces of paper. Both groups were then put through an exercise that led them to believe that they had been excluded from playing a game with others.
Nature reports that the researchers found that those who had physically handled money reported feeling less
distress on a standard social self-esteem scale than those who had
handled blank pieces of paper.
In another experiment, students who counted money before plunging their
fingers into hot water reported lower pain levels than those who had
counted paper. The money-handling students also reported feeling
stronger than the paper shufflers did.
Read more in Nature.