Selective attentional bias for pain-related stimuli amongst pain fearful individuals

Recent research indicates that people who are fearful of pain tend to repor t more negative pain experiences. It also seems that attentional mechanisms may be particularly important in the perception of painful stimuli, especi ally amongst pain fearful individuals. Drawing on a paradigm used to examin e biased cognitive processes in the emotional disorders, the current study investigated whether the fear of pain would be related to a greater selecti ve attentional bias in favour of pain-related stimuli. In order to determin e the nature of this bias, stimuli material were varied in terms of whether they were related to pain sensations, were related to socially threatening situations or were relatively positive. Those with a high fear of pain exh ibited a selective attentional bias towards pain-related information, compa red to those classified as low in the fear of pain. No group differences we re found for either social threat or positive stimuli. These results indica te that one reason why those with a high fear of pain are particularly susc eptible to negative pain experiences could be due to biased attentional pro cesses. Suggestions for cognitive interventions designed to reduce such bia ses are discussed, as are directions for future research. (C) 2001 Internat ional Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.