Effect of cognitive strategy content and length of instructions on cold pressor pain tolerance

This experiment assessed a recent contention that cognitive pain-control strategies are effective because length of training produces demands irrespective of content of training. Participants held the dominant hand in ice water for 5 sec. They then estimated how long they expected to tolerate ice water using one of four cognitive pain-control strategies. People who used multiple cognitive strategies previously found to be effective experienced mean tolerance equal to that of subjects who used multiple cognitive strategies previously found to be ineffective. Participants then used the instructions while their hands were immersed in ice water. People tolerated the pain longer when using effective rather than ineffective strategies. The experiment demonstrated that the efficacy of cognitive pain-control strategies cannot be accounted for by length of instructions alone.