Highlights
- •Writing and visualizing about your best possible future self can increase optimism.
- •Experimentally-induced heat pain impairs shifting task performance.
- •Manipulated optimism counteracts these pain-induced shifting impairments.
Abstract
Persistent pain can lead to difficulties in executive task performance. Three core
executive functions that are often postulated are inhibition, updating, and shifting.
Optimism, the tendency to expect that good things happen in the future, has been shown
to protect against pain-induced performance deterioration in executive function updating.
This study tested whether this protective effect of a temporary optimistic state by
means of a writing and visualization exercise extended to executive function shifting.
A 2 (optimism: optimism vs no optimism) × 2 (pain: pain vs no pain) mixed factorial
design was conducted. Participants (N = 61) completed a shifting task once with and
once without concurrent painful heat stimulation after an optimism or neutral manipulation.
Results showed that shifting performance was impaired when experimental heat pain
was applied during task execution, and that optimism counteracted pain-induced deterioration
in task-shifting performance.
Perspective
Experimentally-induced heat pain impairs shifting task performance and manipulated
optimism or induced optimism counteracted this pain-induced performance deterioration.
Identifying psychological factors that may diminish the negative effect of persistent
pain on the ability to function in daily life is imperative.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 27, 2016
Accepted:
December 7,
2016
Received in revised form:
December 2,
2016
Received:
September 20,
2016
Footnotes
This research was funded by grant 022.003.038 from The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, awarded to the Dutch-Flemish Research School of Experimental Psychopathology. The contribution of Madelon L. Peters is supported by a grant (number: 453-07-005) from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Identification
Copyright
© 2016 by the American Pain Society
