Threshold and reaction time to noxious stimulation: their relations with scores on Manifest Anxiety Scale and Maudsley Personality Inventory

With 20 male Japanese undergraduates relationships between electric shock threshold and reaction time to electric shock with 10 v and personality factors were investigated. Significnat product-moment correlations of --.79 and --.69 between response to noxious stimulation and Manifest Anxiety and Maudsley Neuroticism scores were found.

Psychophysiology of pain

The recent literature on pain states shows: pain thresholds are relatively constant for an individual, but pain tolerance is influenced by psychological state; the expression of pain is a function partly of ethnic membership and degree of extroversion; pain complaints are determined as well by cultural and extroversive factors, and also degree of neuroticism. Studies of pain patients reveals that those with acute pain tend to show normal personality profiles, but the degree of pain experienced is related to the degree of anxiety present. Most chronic pain patients, like those with psychogenic pain, show somatic preoccupations and reactive depression. The treatment and/or rehabilitation of pain patients has developed in three areas. In cases of peripheral neuropathy and some spinal cord lesions, electrical stimulation with "neural pacemakers" can often "close the gate" to pain signals and provide significant reduction or abolition of pain. Psychotropic medications, particularly the tricyclic antidepressants, sometimes in combination with phenothiazines and antihistamines, are effective in many instances of central pain, and help increase the pain tolerance and decrease the need for narcotics in other pain states. Operant conditioning, including the use of biofeedback, extinguishes pain behavior and increases pain-incompatible behaviors, with good long-term results.

Repressor-sensitizer differences on repeated exposures to pain

A Hardy-Wolff-Goodell heat test and a pressure algometer test of pain tolerance were given to 72 female Ss divided into two groups on the basis of their R-S scores. Half the Ss received the heat test first while half received the pressure test first. 5 min. elapsed between the two trials. Analysis of the data indicated that repressors had a higher tolerance for pain than sensitizers on the first trial. However, repressors showed a significant decrease in their tolerance scores from Trial 1 to 2, but not sensitizers. These results were opposite to those expected, indicating that personality factors may have a different effect on the way an individual copes with repeated exposures to psychological stresses and with repeated exposure to pain.

Personality and pain tolerance measures

In an attempt to resolve a controversy in the literature about the relation of extraversion to pain tolerance, a Hardy-Wolff-Goodell heat test and a cold-pressure test of pain tolerance were given to 60 female Ss who comprised two groups. Analysis of the data indicated that neither extraversion not neuroticism was significantly related to pain tolerance as measured by either heat or cold methods ( rs ranged from –.09 to .09). Introverted Ss were much more variable in their pain tolerance on the cold pressor test than extroverts.