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Psychohistorian comments on Pain - Less Wrong
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Chemically and psychologically, I believe there's a big difference between family-just-died and legs-just-got-cut-off pain (or lesser or greater degrees - and please correct me if they are the same neurological phenomenon). The telling thing is that we call emotional suffering "pain" even though it's rather different from the meaning of pain in a physical context. In general, pain is so unpleasant that people will readily call unpleasant experiences painful.
"Pain is bad" might be called a practical universal, like "murder is bad." There are exceptions, but these are unusual enough not to merit a long disclaimer.
Maybe not such a great difference.
An interesting article, but completely orthogonal to my point. My point is that it isn't entirely correct to put the two types of pain on the same scale, because they're meaningfully different phenomena. That study... asks people to assume they're on the same scale and rate them accordingly.
Incidentally, it also asks people to remember pain, not to experience it. It's at least my experience that the memory of physical pain is going to be a lot different than the memory of emotional pain. Physical pain (usually) heals. Emotional pain, in many senses, does not. Emotional pain is a purely mental experience - if someone credibly told you your family died when they didn't, it'd feel just the same until you figured out they were wrong. There's nothing analogous to breaking your leg - you can't really re-create it without re-breaking your leg.
Nothing in this post endorses dualism in any way, shape, or form, lest anyone misconstrue it in that manner.