The effects of experimentally-induced anxiety on the report of pain: a signal detection analysis

Abstract

Previous research on pain threshold and tolerance suggests that induced anxiety tends to increase the report of pain, but rarely have actual levels of anxiety been monitored. Furthermore, threshold and tolerance measures of pain have been shown to be highly susceptible to cognitive and attitudinal factors which affect response bias. The present study attempted to investigate the effects of experimentally-induced anxiety on the report of pain, taking these problems into account. Thirty-six female undergraduates were assigned to one of three experimental conditions. Subjects in the two anxiety groups received negative feedback on a vocabulary test and saw a neutral film or a gory film. Control subjects were given positive feedback on the word test and viewed the neutral film. It was expected that anxious subjects would exhibit poorer discriminability of noxious heat stimuli (lower sensitivity) and tend to report pain at lower levels of stimulation (lower response criteria). Self-reports of state anxiety were higher for both anxiety conditions. However, a signal detection analysis found no differences between groups on pain sensitivity or response bias. Nor were there any differences in mean stimulus ratings. When subjects were post-experimentally divided into extreme groups of High and Low Anxiety, High Anxiety subjects showed lower sensitivity. But contrary to expectations, they exhibited higher response criteria and lower mean stimulus ratings. These results suggest that the relationship between situational anxiety and pain is at best weak, and under certain conditions, state anxiety may be associated with reduced reports of pain.