Sensory and affective predictors of overall pain and emotions associated with affective pain

Abstract

Objective: Psychological scaling techniques consistently produce separate ratings for sensory and affective components of pain. This study examines the relative contributions of these components to pain as a whole and the contributions of different emotions to the affective component of pain.

Design: The design was correlational. Visual analogue scales were used to quantify overall pain, sensory pain, affective pain, and individual emotions. These data lent themselves to regression techniques for expressing pain as a function of sensation and affect as a function of emotion types.

Setting: Data were collected at the Pain Clinic within the Department of Physical Medicine at the Ohio State University.

Patients: Subjects were 40 chronic pain sufferers admitted to an inpatient pain management program.

Results and conclusions: Ratings of overall pain were not a simple summation of sensory and affective ratings, but a linearly additive function of both component ratings each with a unique weighting. The affective component of pain was a function of three differentially weighted sets of emotions, anger, fear, and sadness being most salient. Implications arise for the broader assessment of chronic pain and the treatment of specific emotions that may be particularly associated with the pain.