Private body consciousness, anxiety and the perception of pain

Two studies are described which present data consistent with Barsky and Klerman's hypothesis that people who report pain in the absence of an identifiable organic etiology may be attending to and amplifying normal bodily sensations. The results of these studies demonstrated that young college students with a predisposition toward focusing attention on somatic symptoms (high private body consciousness) and scoring high on State Anxiety reported more areas of aches and pains and rated these sensations as more noxious. Additionally, the most frequent areas of pain identified corresponded to the areas commonly seen in a chronic pain population. An attempt to manipulate self-focused attention with a mirror manipulation in Study 2 failed to produce reliable results.