Uncertain Pain and the Pain of Uncertainty

Abstract

Previous studies on the management of pain have indicated that predictable pain from electric shock is overwhelmingly preferred to non-predictable pain. Also, if the onset or the termination of the pain is under Ss' control it is judged less aversive. The primary purpose of this study was to explore strategies for the management of pain in which an inevitable electric shock would be delivered either by S himself, so that he could be certain of when it was coming, or by a machine at random times during an interval of waiting. Consistent with previous findings, most Ss preferred shocking themselves to passively awaiting a pre-programmed random shock. An unexpected finding was that several Ss who initially selected single random shocks willingly accepted double shocks in order to avoid administering single shocks to themselves. The present study was the first to employ behavioral measures of the aversiveness of shocks with human Ss successfully.