Effect of Emotion Regulation Strategies on the Pain Experience
type: CreativeWork
description: Pain, an unpleasant subjective and multidimensional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, is fundamentally a psychological phenomenon with emotional components. As such, the multi-component coordination of processes by which emotions are moderated, emotional regulation (ER), is of particular interest. Two primary ER strategies are reappraisal and suppression. Few studies have explored the effects of suppression and reappraisal on pain outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine: 1) differences among suppression, reappraisal, and monitoring-control experimental conditions (i.e., conditions involving verbal instruction to engage in specific ER strategies) on indicators of pain and affect; 2) the relationship between participants’ self-reported suppression and reappraisal tendencies with pain threshold/tolerance; 3) if participants’ tendencies to use either suppression or re-appraisal interacted with experimental condition instructions. Of the 151 participants recruited, 142 completed the study. Participants first completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003) to quantify their typical self-reported suppression and reappraisal use and then completed pain threshold and tolerance tasks involving use of an advanced thermal stimulator. Subsequently, a baseline resting period occurred before participants were randomly assigned to either a suppression (n = 53), reappraisal (n = 48), or monitoring (n = 41) condition. They then completed a 10-trial pain task and a recovery period. Self-report measures of pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, anxiety, and tension were collected before randomization, following the pain task, and following recovery. Facial expressions, heart rate, and galvanic skin response were recorded during the baseline, 10-trial pain task, and recovery periods. The Facial Action Coding System (Ekman, Friesen, & Hager, 2002) was used to quantify general and pain-related facial activity. An automated program w…
abstract: Pain, an unpleasant subjective and multidimensional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, is fundamentally a psychological phenomenon with emotional components. As such, the multi-component coordination of processes by which emotions are moderated, emotional regulation (ER), is of particular interest. Two primary ER strategies are reappraisal and suppression. Few studies have explored the effects of suppression and reappraisal on pain outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine: 1) differences among suppression, reappraisal, and monitoring-control experimental conditions (i.e., conditions involving verbal instruction to engage in specific ER strategies) on indicators of pain and affect; 2) the relationship between participants’ self-reported suppression and reappraisal tendencies with pain threshold/tolerance; 3) if participants’ tendencies to use either suppression or re-appraisal interacted with experimental condition instructions. Of the 151 participants recruited, 142 completed the study. Participants first completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003) to quantify their typical self-reported suppression and reappraisal use and then completed pain threshold and tolerance tasks involving use of an advanced thermal stimulator. Subsequently, a baseline resting period occurred before participants were randomly assigned to either a suppression (n = 53), reappraisal (n = 48), or monitoring (n = 41) condition. They then completed a 10-trial pain task and a recovery period. Self-report measures of pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, anxiety, and tension were collected before randomization, following the pain task, and following recovery. Facial expressions, heart rate, and galvanic skin response were recorded during the baseline, 10-trial pain task, and recovery periods. The Facial Action Coding System (Ekman, Friesen, & Hager, 2002) was used to quantify general and pain-related facial activity. An automated program w…
author: Hampton, Amy Jean Diane
language: en
date published: 2014-07
date modified: 2026-07-24T04:03:32Z
provider: University of Regina
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/10294/5760

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.82465/4103