Department of Physiological Psychology, University of Bamberg, Bamberg 97047, Germany.
Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Maastricht University, Maastricht 6200 MD, The Netherlands.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2023 Sep 19;18(1). doi: 10.1093/scan/nsad042.
Situationally induced optimism has been shown to influence several components of experimental pain. The aim of the present study was to enlarge these findings for the first time to the earliest components of the pain response by measuring contact heat evoked potentials (CHEPs) and the sympathetic skin response (SSR). Forty-seven healthy participants underwent two blocks of phasic thermal stimulation. CHEPs, the SSR and self-report pain ratings were recorded. Between the blocks of stimulation, the 'Best Possible Self' imagery and writing task was performed to induce situational optimism. The optimism manipulation was successful in increasing state optimism. It did, however, neither affect pain-evoked potentials nor the SSR nor self-report pain ratings. These results suggest that optimism does not alter early responses to pain. The higher-level cognitive processes involved in optimistic thinking might only act on later stages of pain processing. Therefore, more research is needed targeting different time frames of stimulus processing and response measures for early and late pain processing in parallel.
情境诱导的乐观情绪已被证明会影响实验性疼痛的几个组成部分。本研究的目的是首次通过测量接触热诱发电位 (CHEPs) 和交感皮肤反应 (SSR) 将这些发现扩大到疼痛反应的最早成分。47 名健康参与者接受了两个阶段的阶段性热刺激。记录 CHEPs、SSR 和自我报告的疼痛评分。在刺激块之间，进行“最佳自我”意象和写作任务以诱导情境乐观。乐观情绪的操纵成功地增加了状态乐观情绪。然而，它既不影响疼痛诱发的电位，也不影响 SSR，也不影响自我报告的疼痛评分。这些结果表明，乐观情绪不会改变对疼痛的早期反应。乐观思维中涉及的更高层次的认知过程可能只作用于疼痛处理的后期阶段。因此，需要更多的研究针对不同的刺激处理时间框架和反应测量，以并行方式针对早期和晚期疼痛处理的不同时间点。
