Social disclosure, coactive peer companions, and social modelling determinants of pain communications.

Abstract
Pain communications are under the control of contextual antecedent and consequent social events, because of their impact on others. The availability of communication channels was varied to describe reactions to electric shock between 2 individuals; 50 women were assigned randomly to 5 groups. Experimental variables evaluated: the impact of a confederate dissimulating high tolerance to the shocks, a requirement either to disclose personal reactions to the model, or to remain silent, and the effects of a coactive peer companion subjected to comparable discomfort, as contrasted with a peer not exposed to the shocks. Modeling requirements were considerably more influential than the disclosure requirement, or the presence of a coactive companion. Quantitative analyses of magnitude estimations indicated that the social modeling influence altered the exponent in power function descriptions of the relationship between the noxious stimulation and reports of subjective experience.