Suffering for science: the effects of implicit social demands on response to experimentally induced pain

In two experiments subjects rated their pain during baseline trials of cold pressor and finger pressure pain. After various instructional treatments, they were posttested with these same stimuli. As in previous studies, we found in both experiments that coping suggestions significantly reduced reported pain. Experiment 1, however, demonstrated that subjects often refrained from using available cognitive coping strategies to reduce pain unless they had been given explicit permission to do so. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and also showed that explicit permission to "do whatever you can to reduce pain" was as effective as a coping suggestion in decreasing reported pain. These findings indicate that subjects' interpretation of what is appropriate responding in the test situation determines how they choose to cope with the painful stimulation. Thus standard experimental procedures for assessing baseline levels of pain implicitly lead subjects to refrain from coping and thereby tend to underestimate their ability to control pain. Moreover, suggestions and other instructional techniques for coping with pain may produce much of their effect not by teaching subjects new coping skills but instead by giving them permission to use already available coping strategies.     

Involvement in everyday imaginative activities, attitudes toward hypnosis, and hypnotic suggestibility.

One hundred male and 83 female subjects were assessed on absorption (i.e., involvement in everyday imaginative activities), attitudes toward hypnosis, and hypnotic suggestibility. Significant positive correlations were obtained for both sexes between absorption and attitudes and between each of these variables and hypnotic suggestibility. Multiple regression analyses indicated that most of the predicted variance in hypnotic suggestibility scores was accounted for in both sexes by the absorption variable.     

Expectancy, redefinition and reported pain

Three groups of subjects were administered a redefinition strategy which asked them to focus on sensations during noxious stimulation. Those in one group were informed that the strategy would reduce pain (positive expectancy), those in a second were informed that it would augment pain (negative expectancy), and those in a third were given no information on expectancy. Subjects in a fourth group received neither redefinition nor instructions on expectancy. The four groups did not differ either in expectancy of pain reduction or in reduction of reported pain. Subjects in all groups expected more pain than they reported, and expectations for pain reduction showed only a small correlation with degree of reported pain reduction. In all groups, men reported less pain than women.     

Effects of instructional set on attributions of nonvolition during hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia

Fifty highly hypnotizable subjects were assigned to four treatment groups or a no-treatment control group and then underwent two pain stimulation trials. Half the treated subjects were administered hypnotic analgesia, half waking analgesia. Within hypnotic and nonhypnotic treatments, half the subjects were given actively worded analgesia instructions, half passively worded instructions. Subjects in the four treated groups reported equivalent pain reduction and equivalent use of coping imagery, although hypnotic subjects rated themselves as more deeply hypnotized than did nonhypnotic subjects. Both hypnotic and nonhypnotic subjects given passive instructions rated their pain reduction as occurring involuntarily, whereas those given active instructions reported that their pain was reduced through their active use of coping strategies. These findings support sociocognitive formulations of hypnotic responding that view ratings of involuntariness as reflecting contextually guided interpretations of behavior.     

Magnitude scales for cold pressor pain

Subjects in two experiments immersed a hand and forearm in ice water (cold pressor test) for 60 sec and gave magnitude estimates of pain every 5 sec. Forty subjects immersed an arm for three trials in Experiment 1, and 60 subjects immersed an arm for two trials in Experiment 2. Linear, power, or additive constant functions fitted the data almost equally well. Exponents of the two-constant power function differed from those of the additive constant function. Individual differences in exponents were marked, but various psychological manipulations aimed at reducing pain failed to affect the exponents. The utility of power functions to describe cold pressor pain has yet to be determined.     

Absorption in imaginings, sex-role orientation, and the recall of dreams by males and females

Questionnaire measures of dream recall frequency, number of sensory qualities in dreams and emotion in dreams were correlated with several imaginal ability and personality variables in male and female college students. Absorption (i.e., subjects' degree of involvement in such activities as daydreaming, watching a movie, etc.) was the most important predictor of dream variables in females. In males sex-role orientation contrary to stereotype (i.e., femininity) was the only variable significantly related to a dream variable (i.e., frequency of dream recall). The implications of these sex differences for research on dream recall are discussed.