Abstract
Despite its importance in pain perception, there is a paucity of research investigating the influence of anxiety. This study tested the proposition that anxiety can lead to the exacerbation of pain perception when the source of anxiety is related to the pain experience. When the source is related to something else, anxiety may even reduce the reaction to pain. Sources of anxiety were manipulated in the laboratory - anxiety related to pain and anxiety related to successful learning or the combination of anxiety related to both pain and learning. Verbal, physiological and behavioral differences were obtained showing that focus upon both the pain and the learning task yielded the strongest pain reactions, while focus upon the learning alone yielded the lowest pain reaction, but the largest learning errors. Focus upon pain was in-between. The theoretical implications of these data were discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 371-383 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Pain |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 1984 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was supported by Grant 03-694 from the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and by Grant 01-581 from the Research Authority, Bar-Ilan University. Gratitude is also expressed to Dr. Diana Elton for her support of this research. Technical assistance was provided by Yaacov Gutgold and Yossi Gabai. Ruth Isseroff, Menachem Feder, and Aniam Levine also assisted in data collection.