Characteristics of clients seeking therapy for the reduction of dental avoidance: reactions to pain.

Avoidant dental patients responding to advertisements offering behavioral treatment for avoidance of dentistry were compared with patients particularly low in dental fear along a number of dimensions. Factors which discriminated between the two groups were: gender; the neuroticism scale of the Eysenck Personality Inventory; several self-reported reactions to past dental treatment; tolerance for dental (but not non-dental) pain; state anxiety during pain testing; and a measure of "efficacy". This last finding suggested that avoidant subjects saw themselves as less able to tolerate electrical tooth pulp stimulation and dental treatment than did their fearless counterparts, but no different in ability to tolerate pain irrelevant to dentistry (shock to the forearm).