Competing Goals Attenuate Avoidance Behavior in the Context of Pain (original) (raw)
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The journal of pain : official journal of the American Pain Society, 2014
Individuals in pain often face the choice between avoiding pain and pursuing other equally valued goals. However, little is known about pain-related choice behavior and pain perception in goal conflict situations. Seventy-eight healthy volunteers performed a computerized task requiring repeated choices between incompatible options, differing in their effect on probability to receive painful stimulation and money. Depending on group assignment, participants chose between increased pain probability versus decreased money probability (avoidance-avoidance conflict situation); decreased pain probability versus increased money probability (approach-approach conflict situation); or decrease versus increase in both probabilities (double approach/avoidance conflict situation). During the choice task, participants rated painfulness, unpleasantness, threat, and fearfulness associated with the painful stimulation and how they felt. Longer choice latency and more choice switching were associated...
Fear-Avoidance Model of Chronic Pain
The Clinical Journal of Pain, 2012
Objective: The fear-avoidance (FA) model of chronic pain describes how individuals experiencing acute pain may become trapped into a vicious circle of chronic disability and suffering. We propose to extend the FA model by adopting a motivational perspective on chronic pain and disability. Methods: A narrative review Results: There is ample evidence to support the validity of the FA model as originally formulated. There are, however, some key challenges that call for a next generation of the FA model. First, the FA model has its roots in psychopathology, and investigators will have to find a way to account for findings that do not easily fit within such framework. Second, the FA model needs to address the dynamics and complexities of disability and functional recovery. Third, the FA model should incorporate the idea that pain-related fear and avoidance occurs in a context of multiple and often competing personal goals. Discussion: To address these three key challenges, we argue that the next generation of the FA model needs to more explicitly adopt a motivational perspective, one that is built around the organizing powers of goals and self-regulatory processes. Using this framework, the FA model is recast as capturing the persistent but futile attempts to solve pain-related problems in order to protect and restore life goals.
The opportunity to avoid pain may paradoxically increase fear
The journal of pain : official journal of the American Pain Society, 2018
Fear-avoidance models propose that pain-related fear may spur avoidance behaviour leading to chronic pain disability. Pain-related fear elicits avoidance behaviour, which is typically aimed at reducing fear. We hypothesized that engaging in avoidance may (paradoxically) increase rather than decrease pain-related fear (i.e. bidirectionality hypothesis). In a between-subject design, participants (N=64) were randomly assigned to the avoidance group or the control group. Avoidance group participants were led to believe they could avoid full exposure to a painful heat stimulus by pressing the stop-button, while control group participants believed they were exposed to the full painful heat stimulus at all times. In reality and unknown to the participants, the intensity and duration of the heat stimulus was independent of the avoidance response, and was identical in both groups. During the test, the avoidance response (i.e. pressing the stop-button) was no longer available. As expected, pa...
Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 2020
Background Although pain-related avoidance is mainly intended to reduce the accompanying anticipatory fear, avoidance behavior may paradoxically increase fear when a previous avoidance response is no longer available, suggesting that there is a bidirectional relationship between pain-related fear and avoidance. Purpose We hypothesized that avoidance can serve as a source of information that fuels irrational pain-related threat appraisals, which, in turn, increases pain-related fear. Methods Participants (N = 66) were exposed to a painful heat stimulus and randomly assigned to the avoidance or control group. They were instructed to avoid the full heat intensity by pressing a stop button in the presence of a stop cue. Only avoidance group participants received a stop cue and were allowed to press the stop button, while control group participants received the same instructions but never had the opportunity to avoid the full heat intensity. In reality and unknown to participants, the in...
Subjective utility moderates bidirectional effects of conflicting motivations on pain perception
Scientific reports, 2017
Minimizing pain and maximizing pleasure are conflicting motivations when pain and reward co-occur. Decisions to prioritize reward consumption or pain avoidance are assumed to lead to pain inhibition or facilitation, respectively. Such decisions are a function of the subjective utility of the stimuli involved, i.e. the relative value assigned to the stimuli to compare the potential outcomes of a decision. To test perceptual pain modulation by varying degrees of motivational conflicts and the role of subjective utility, we implemented a task in which healthy volunteers had to decide between accepting a reward at the cost of receiving a nociceptive electrocutaneous stimulus or rejecting both. Subjective utility of the stimuli was assessed by a matching task between the stimuli. Accepting reward coupled to a nociceptive stimulus resulted in decreased perceived intensity, while rejecting the reward to avoid pain resulted in increased perceived intensity, but in both cases only if a high ...
Cognitive Therapy and Research, 2008
A group of 100 adults with chronic low back pain (CLBP), drawn from a larger national sample, completed a questionnaire battery that assessed (among other things) goal conflict and goal self-efficacy, pain severity, pain-induced fear, and 3 months later, two important clinical outcomes: physical disability and depression. Consistent with emerging motivation-centered models of adaptation (e.g., Ford, Humans as selfconstructing living systems: A developmental perspective on behavior and personality. Erlbaum, 1987; Karoly Review of General Psychology, 3, 264-291, 1999) and cognitivebehavioral accounts of pain-specific fears (e.g., Asmundson et al. Clinical Psychology Review, 19, 97-119, 1999), structural equation analyses revealed that (a) goal selfefficacy, goal conflict, and pain severity independently predicted pain-induced fear, (b) pain-induced fear fully mediated the effects of goal conflict and goal self-efficacy on physical disability and depression, and (c) pain-induced fear partially mediated the effects of severity on disability and depression. Results suggest that clinical pain specialists should treat pain-induced fear as a means of forestalling disability and depression, and that they should also seek to modify how CLBP patients think about and organize their life goals.
Non-pain goal pursuit inhibits attentional bias to pain. Pain, 153, 1180-1186.
Pain, 2012
Although dealing with pain is a vital goal to pursue, most individuals are also engaged in the pursuit of other goals. The aim of the present experiment was to investigate whether attentional bias to pain signals is inhibited when one is pursuing a concurrent salient but nonpain task goal. Attentional bias to pain signals was measured in pain-free volunteers (n = 63) using a spatial cueing task with pain cues and neutral cues. The pursuit of a concurrent goal was manipulated by including additional trials in which a digit appeared at the middle of the screen. Half of the participants (goal group) were instructed to name these additional stimuli aloud. In order to increase the affective-motivational value of this non-pain-related goal, monetary reward and punishment were made contingent upon the performance of this task. Participants of the control group did not perform the additional task. As predicted, the results show attentional bias to pain signals in the control group, but not in the goal group. This indicates that attentional bias to signals of impending pain is inhibited when one is engaged in the pursuit of another salient but nonpain goal. The results of this study underscore a motivational view on attention to pain, in which the pursuit of multiple goals, including nonpain goals, is taken into account.
Pain, 2008
Trying to control pain is a common human goal. But little is know about what happens when one loses control over pain. This paper reports an experiment with 74 healthy volunteers, half of whom were given control over a pain stimulus and subsequently lost control, and half of whom never had control over the pain. This study investigates whether having had control and lost it would result in a more unpleasant pain experience, more fear about impending pain, a heightened vigilance to pain, and greater interference on a secondary task. Participants in the experimental group first learned to avoid a painful stimulus by correctly responding to a card sorting task, but later on lost control over the painful stimulus. In the yoked comparison group, participants had no control over the painful stimulus from the beginning. Results indicated that losing control over pain and, relatedly, attempting to control uncontrollable pain have significant costs such as a higher fear of the impending pain stimulus and retarded performance on a secondary task. When attempts to avoid pain are blocked, individuals persist in their avoidance attempts, try harder, and narrow their focus of attention upon the problem to be solved. These findings are discussed within the context of a dual process model of coping with uncontrollable adverse events [Brandtstädter J, Renner G. Tenacious goal pursuit and flexible goal adjustment: explication and age-related analysis of assimilative and accommodative strategies of coping. Psychol Aging 1990;5:58-67] and possible mechanisms for perseverance with ineffective solutions.
Pain, 2011
Clinical evidence suggests that a persistent search for solutions for chronic pain may bring along costs at the cognitive, affective, and behavioral level. Specifically, attempts to control pain may fuel hypervigilance and prioritize attention towards pain-related information. This hypothesis was investigated in an experiment with 41 healthy volunteers. Prioritization of attention towards a signal for pain was measured using an adaptation of a visual search paradigm in which participants had to search for a target presented in a varying number of colored circles. One of these colors (Conditioned Stimulus) became a signal for pain (Unconditioned Stimulus: electrocutaneous stimulus at tolerance level) using a classical conditioning procedure. Intermixed with the visual search task, participants also performed another task. In the pain-control group, participants were informed that correct and fast responses on trials of this second task would result in an avoidance of the Unconditioned Stimulus. In the comparison group, performance on the second task was not instrumental in controlling pain. Results showed that in the paincontrol group, attention was more prioritized towards the Conditioned Stimulus than in the comparison group. The theoretical and clinical implications of these results are discussed.