Patterns of pain-relevant social interactions.

Pasts studied have focused on the individual effects of Solicitous, Distracting, and Negative spousal responses to pain on patient's pain behavior and pain severity. Because spouses may emit any combination of these responses, this research examined the conjoint effects of marital satisfaction and these perceived spousal responses by using WISE "step-down" procedure as described by Kenny and Judd (1983. Ninety-six married male chronic-pain patients completed the West Haven-Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory (WHYMPI), Locke Wallace marital Adjustment Scale, and Pain Behavior Check List (PBCL). Final step-down models included significant 2-way and 3-way interactions on the PBCL measures of Distorted Ambulation and Seeking Help, significant main effects for Affective Distress, and a 4-way interaction on the WHYMPI Pain Severity scale. These trimmed models accounted for 23%: to 33% of the variance in the criterion measures. These results show that higher order interactions make unique contributions to the variance and should be examined along with main effects.