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Multi-sensory Responsiveness and Personality Traits Predict Daily Pain Sensitivity
Tami Bar-Shalita1, Sharon A Cermak2,3
1Department of Occupational Therapy, School of Health Professions, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience
|January 31, 2020
Summary
Individual differences in pain perception are influenced by how responsive people are to daily sensations and their personality traits. Aversive responsiveness to sensations was the strongest predictor of daily pain sensitivity.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Pain Research
Background:
- Individual differences in pain perception are extensively studied.
- Neuroticism is considered a significant moderator of pain perception.
- Multi-sensory responsiveness to daily sensations is linked to pain perception, but its interplay with personality traits in relation to pain is underexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the combined contribution of multi-sensory responsiveness and personality traits to daily pain perception.
- To examine the relationship between personality traits and multi-sensory responsiveness.
Main Methods:
- A community sample of 204 adults participated.
- Participants completed the Sensory Responsiveness Questionnaire-Intensity Scale (SRQ-IS), the Big Five Inventory (BFI), and the Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire (PSQ).
Main Results:
- Aversive responsiveness to daily sensations (SRQ-IS Aversive sub-scale) was the strongest predictor of daily pain sensitivity (PSQ-Total score), explaining 9% of the variance.
- Personality traits (Neuroticism, Openness-to-Experience, Extraversion) and aversive responsiveness together accounted for 16% of the variance in daily pain sensitivity, with a large effect size (r = 0.39, p < 0.0001).
Conclusions:
- This study is the first to explore the interplay between aversive responsiveness to daily sensations and specific personality traits in predicting daily pain sensitivity.
- Aversive responsiveness emerged as the primary contributing factor to daily pain sensitivity.
- Findings enhance the understanding of variability in pain experiences in both clinical and experimental settings.
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