Attention, distraction, and cold-pressor pain.

This article compares the effects of distracting oneself from, versus attending to, the sensations produced by cold-pressor stimulation. Experiment 1 revealed that distraction is a better coping strategy than attention to sensations when subjects are asked to report pain threshold and tolerance. Experiments 2 and 3 examined the hypothesis that distraction is effective because persons hold a commonsense belief in the benefits of distraction as a coping device. Neither experiment supported the commonsense hypothesis as an explanation for the findings of Experiment 1. In a final experiment, subjects were assigned to either a distraction, attention, or no-instructions condition and were asked to report their distress during a 4-minute cold-pressor trial. Distraction reduced distress early in the trial, but attention to sensations proved to be a superior strategy for the last 2 minutes of the trial. It is proposed that distraction and attention to sensations may be differentially effective depending on the duration of the painful stimulus. Possible mediating processes underlying the two strategies are discussed.

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes