PAIN AND PAIN TOLERANCE IN PROFESSIONAL BALLET DANCERS

Pain experience in sport had been the subject of increasing research i n recent years. While sports professionals have generally been found t o have higher pain thresholds than control subjects the reasons for th is are not entirely clear. The present study seeks to investigate one possible explanatory factor, the importance of the popular image of th e physical activity and of the self-image of its participants, by exam ining pain experience in professional ballet dancers. Like sports prof essionals, dancers were found to have higher pain and pain tolerance t hresholds than age matched controls in the Cold Presser Test. However, they also reported a more acute experience of the sensory aspects of the pain. Explanations of this apparent paradox are discussed both in terms of the neuroticism scores of the two groups and in terms of the dancers' greater experience of pain and its relationship with physical activity. The results illustrated the importance of using multidimens ional measures of pain in this type of investigation.