Sensibilidad, resistencia y expresión del dolor: relación con la socialización del dolor

Abstract

Objectives This paper explores whether some individual features —due to pain socialisation— may have an effect on subjects’ pain perception. Our study focuses on three types of personal traits: social, apprehensive and egalitarian individuals. We analyse the effect of these personal traits on pain sensitivity, pain endurance and willingness to report pain as obtained through the Gender Role Expectations of Pain (GREP) questionnaire. Material and methods A total of 136 experimental subjects completed the questionnaire (in Spanish) in two experimental sessions at the University of Granada (Spain). Subjects were required to report their pain level (sensitivity, endurance and mode of expression) using a blind VAS when they compared themselves to a typical woman, and then to a typical man. We use both variables to compute our core variables. The questionnaire included three new variables to capture personal traits of the subject: do you feel contentment when you report your pain to others? Do you suffer pain when other individuals share their pain with you? Does knowing that other people also suffer pain make your pain less severe? We called them social, apprehensive and egalitarian, respectively. We use censored regression models to examine the effect of these personal traits on GREP measures. Results 1) The proportion of individuals who share their pain with other subjects (or vice versa) is overwhelming: only 25% negatively responded to our three social questions; 2) subjects who feel contentment when they report their pain to other people show significant lesser endurance (−20%) and higher willingness to report pain (+15%). Conclusions This study shows that certain personal traits associated with the socialisation of pain have an effect on its evaluation. Specifically, to feel relief on talking about pain with others is a key factor which affects the sensitivity, endurance and the habit of expressing it.