Avoidance-oriented behaviors and cognitions, such as pain catastrophizing, are associated with pain sensitivity in both healthy and clinical populations, and promote vulnerability to chronic pain. Less is known about the extent to which approach-oriented behavior, the opponent process of avoidance, influences adaptation to chronic pain. The purpose of this study was to provide a preliminary evaluation of the association of performance on a classic behavioral approach task—the progressive ratio task—and pain sensitivity in response to quantitative sensory testing (QST). This study was a proof-of-concept pilot conducted in a subsample (N = 30) of a larger study that evaluated sleep and pain in older adults. During a 10 minute session, participants completed a progressive ratio task in which the number of button presses required to earn a 25 cent reinforcer systematically increased with each reinforcer earned. The primary outcome was total rewards (i.e., quarters) earned (M = 19.3, SD = 4.9), which is a behavioral measure of approach motivation. Participants subsequently underwent quantitative sensory testing (QST) of thermal and pressure threshold, and cold pain tolerance. Hierarchical regression results indicated that higher reward total was significantly associated with higher thermal threshold (p < .05), but not other QST measures. Reward total was significantly negatively correlated with pain catastrophizing (r = -.40; p < .05), but not depressive symptoms (r = -.22, p = .25). When catastrophizing was entered as a covariate, the effect of reward total on thermal threshold fell beyond the significance threshold (p = .12), but the magnitude of the effect was only minimally reduced. Thus, approach behavior appears to act in opposition to catastrophizing in predicting pain response, providing preliminary support for an approach-avoidance opponent process model of adaptation to chronic pain, which may have implications for chronic pain coping theory. Supported by NIH/NIAMS R01AR05487.