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Last updated: Wed, Jul 31, 2024
An experimenter can put a rat into a cage with a wire mesh floor and can subject the rat to electric shock through its paws. Experimenters have done just that. The rat can escape the shock momentarily by jumping. But the experimenter can put the rat into a harness to prevent its jumping. In one series of tests, the eating of rats in a shock cage was compared between tethered and untethered rats. The two groups received the same total duration of shock, but the untethered rats ate more. In another series, the tethered rats finished with higher blood pressure than the untethered rats.1 (Apparently experimenters can also take the blood pressure of rats.)
Experiments with human surgery patients compared two groups. One group received the standard hospital treatment, while the other group was told about the pain they would feel after surgery and how they might cope with it. The second group were shown breathing and relaxation techniques and told that they should ask for meds if they needed them. The second group reported less pain and asked for less medication.2
These two experiments and others like them have been interpreted as demonstrating a role for "sense of control" in pain perception. By this interpretation, a sense of control reduces the sense of pain. Something clearly is producing an effect, but to call it "sense of control" seems like a leap. This conjures a new "sense" without anything like adequate evidence. The problem with "sense of control" that I'm trying to point out is that the label used for it is so broad that, if you accept its existence, you can apply it to all kinds of things, even if they're not like the experimental examples. And, of course, nobody knows exactly what if anything the common factor in these examples is. (Perhaps it should be called the "tethering effect" instead? Then the principle would be that animals who feel “tied down” hurt more.)
The experiments involving surgery patients have a direct clinical purpose: better care for surgery patients. Many treatment variations have been tried. Just advising patients what pains they might expect seems to cause them to focus on those pains. Skills such as relaxation or distraction seem to be more helpful. Of course, if you are teaching patients relaxation techniques, it's rather a stretch to call it "sense of control."
"Sense of control" as a scientific theory has some big weaknesses. First, it is be difficult to explain why "sense of control" should exist unless there really is some degree of control. In that case, why should we speak about "sense of control" rather than simply "control?" Second, "sense of control" has at least the same subjectivity problems as pain does. Third, it is hard to give an experimental subject a sense of control without either providing him/her with some real control or else simply demonstrating a placebo effect. See Placebo Analgesia later in this chapter for a discussion of placebo analgesia.