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Last updated: Fri, Feb 7, 2025
Much psychological and behavioral research into pain goes on. This research isn't about deep subconscious conflicts concerning toilets and parents' bedrooms. It's about the interrelations between pain and behavior. (In fact researchers aren't much interested in things that can't be observed. Much more about this in The Psychology of Pain.)
Researchers seem to be mostly interested in
The laboratory is an environment in which it is easy and convenient to provide a controlled experience for subjects. Computers can be wired and programmed to deliver a uniform protocol, including prompts, timing, and digital and analog user input, carefully metered painful stimulation, and automated data collection. Many college campuses provide a suitable environment. Computers can be used in conjunction with sophisticated medical measuring equipment up to and including an MRI machine to collect data or present stimuli to the subjects. Without great additional expense, minor medical procedures can be added, such as administration of pharmaceuticals.
Another sort of laboratory environment can be used to explore the social/behavioral aspects of pain. Designed and controlled social situations can be created and the subjects can be observed and questioned.
It is quite difficult to devise an experimental procedure that is both natural and controlled. It is well known that the mere knowledge that one is being observed (or likely to be observed) affects one's behavior, but subjects must be informed and must consent. A partial substitute for experiment that is generally inexpensive is to question subjects about their natural experiences. Epidemiological studies are at one extreme of this approach. Toward the other extreme, structured questionnaires can be given to the subjects, often before and after some event of interest, such as a pain treatment program. When practicable, medical records may be included.
All of these research scenarios have limitations, imperfections, and pitfalls. Some are matters of practicality or expense, while others are the result of the nature of pain and its related phenomena.
The subject base is a practical matter, that is, who the subjects are. It is usually most convenient and least expensive to use “locals” as subjects. Academic research tends to be performed on college students, who are cheap and plentiful in their natural environment. Research by practitioners often uses the patient base associated with their practice. Patients of different clinics and care facilities differ, and patients differ from non-patients in ways other than their objective medical condition. Seasoned researchers Dennis Turk and Ronald Melzack state that the association between psychological findings and pain frequently noted in pain clinics is less frequently observed in epidemiological studies,
1 a phenomenon that is partly subject-based and partly methodological.
Mid-20th-century researchers found that sensitivity to electric shock varied according to a mathematical relation known as a “power law.” However, experimenters came up with different values for the exponent, and other researchers reported cultural differences. Research in the following decades ultimately revealed that pain is more complex than the power law suggests, and human variability enters in unexpected ways. Four different thresholds related to painful sensation can be identified:
Regardless of culture most people have a similar threshold of sensation. Culture has a large impact on the pain perception threshold and a larger impact on both pain tolerance levels.2
Laboratory experimental environments can be highly controlled, and some of the elements of natural pain experience can be fixed or excluded. This can be an advantage when the researcher wishes to isolate a single factor. However, the more that variables are controlled, the less the generalizability and extensibility of the result. Lab experiments that subject the subject to pain always differ from natural pain in at least three ways: (1) the subject can stop the pain at will and knows this; (2) the subject knows (with reasonable certainty) that the experimental pain will not produce lasting damage; (3) the duration of the pain is always less than in chronic pain conditions. The quality of the pain is often different from real chronic medical pain.