Abstract
Facial expressions of pain are an important part of the pain response, signaling distress
to others and eliciting social support. To evaluate how voluntary modulation of this
response contributes to the pain experience, 29 subjects were exposed to thermal stimulation
while making standardized pain, control, or relaxed faces. Dependent measures were
self-reported negative effect (valence and arousal) as well as the intensity of nociceptive
stimulation required to reach a given subjective level of pain. No direct social feedback
was given by the experimenter. Although the amount of nociceptive stimulation did
not differ across face conditions, subjects reported more negative effects in response
to painful stimulation while holding the pain face. Subsequent analyses suggested
the effects were not due to preexisting differences in the difficulty or unpleasantness
of making the pain face. These results suggest that voluntary pain expressions have
no positively reinforcing (pain attenuating) qualities, at least in the absence of
external contingencies such as social reinforcement, and that such expressions may
indeed be associated with higher levels of negative affect in response to similar
nociceptive input.
Perspective
This study demonstrates that making a standardized pain face increases negative affect
in response to nociceptive stimulation, even in the absence of social feedback. This
suggests that exaggerated facial displays of pain, although often socially reinforced,
may also have unintended aversive consequences.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 04, 2008
Accepted:
January 7,
2008
Received in revised form:
January 4,
2008
Received:
November 4,
2007
Footnotes
Supported by NIMH grant P50-MH069315 and by a gift from William Heckrodt.
Identification
Copyright
© 2008 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
