The folly of effort: Ironic effects in the mental control of pain

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Abstract
During exposure to pain, participants who were engaged in hypnotic analgesia or stress inoculation provided pain reports every 5 s and 45 s, respectively. It was found that the frequency of pain reporting had a significant effect on participants' level of experienced pain. This finding is discussed in the context of important methodological implications for laboratory investigations of analgesia. Furthermore, preliminary evidence was obtained suggesting that high hypnotizables in hypnotic analgesia remained relatively undisrupted by frequent pain reporting. Based on Wegner's (1994) ironic process theory, it is argued that this pattern of results is inconsistent with theories of hypnosis that propose that hypnotized individuals intentionally engender responses while remaining unaware of their sustained, deliberate effort. The obtained pattern of results was, however, predicted from the dissociated control model of hypnosis (Bowers, 1990,1992).

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