(PS6-A22) Does Pain Resilience Moderate Pain and Affective Responses to Repeated Painful Stimulation?

The ever-growing monetary costs in addition to the individual disability and suffering related to chronic pain make it imperative to understand pain mechanisms to develop effective interventions. Consistent with the emphasis of Sturgeon and Zautra’s model on resilience as a contributor to pain adaptation, the present study was designed to examine the effects of individual differences in pain-related resilience on responses to repeated exposure to an experimental pain stimulus (i.e., hand immersion in ice-cold water). Furthermore, as the benefits of resilience are hypothesized to be most evident when physical or psychological challenge is greatest, this is the first study that also examined the effect that a procedural manipulation designed to elicit annoyance (i.e., negative affect) has on pain resiliency. This novel design allowed us to look at the combined effects of pain resilience and a negative mood manipulation on pain and affect responses to repeated exposure to cold water immersion. 

There were a total of 95 participants with an average age of 19.2 (SD = 2.2), 66% female, 85.5% White, and 95.9% non-Hispanic. The participants in both the control and manipulation groups were assigned the cold water immersion task for 3 out of the 5 trials. Tasks were predetermined for the control group whereas the mood manipulation group was assigned pain tasks by the confederates. The participants reported their pain intensity ratings using a 0-100 Visual Analog Scale during the one minute immersion task. Following the task, they also completed a retrospective pain unpleasantness and intensity assessment and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule. The three-way interaction was examined from a 2 Mood Manipulation (mood induction, no mood induction) x 2 Pain Resilience Scale score (above the median, below the median) x 3 Trial (cold water immersion 1, 2, and 3) ANOVA. Separate ANOVAs were conducted for each dependent variable of pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, negative affect, and positive affect. 

Results of these analyses revealed a significant 3-way interaction between mood induction, pain resilience, and trials for pain unpleasantness, F(2,182) = 3.567, p = .030, but no significant 3-way interactions for pain intensity, F(2,182) = .832, p = .437, positive affect, F(2,180) = .849, p = .430, or negative affect, F(2,182) = .787, p = .457. Follow-up analyses indicated that this interaction reflected decreasing unpleasantness ratings over repeated exposure to cold water immersion only among those with high resilience who were in the negative mood induction group. These results of the current study suggest that interventions to promote pain resilience might be beneficial for people suffering from chronic pain, as resilience may be associated with coping responses that help to buffer the perceived unpleasantness of inescapable pain, which is consistent with the literature regarding chronic pain and resilience.