**How does the effectiveness of pain regulation strategies (acceptance,
reappraisal and distraction) vary across pain stimulation of different
duration?**
Valentina Haspert^1 , Paul Pauli^1, ^3 , Matthias J. Wieser^1,2 ,
Philipp Reicherts^1
^1 Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg
^2 Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus University
Rotterdam^
3 Center of Mental Health, University of Würzburg
The emotion regulation strategies acceptance, reappraisal and
distraction were found to reduce pain perception, but the influence of
factors moderating the effectiveness of the different strategies is only
poorly understood. A crucial aspect might be the length of the pain
stimulus, which might lead to differences across strategies. To this
end, we assigned 123 participants to one of three groups (acceptance,
distraction, reappraisal) and instructed them to regulate brief (10s)
and tonic (3min) heat pain stimuli employing the respective strategy or
to use no strategy (control condition). In addition to pain intensity
and unpleasantness ratings, heart rate (HR) and skin conductance (SC)
were recorded. Analysis of brief pain stimuli showed significantly
decreased pain ratings for regulation trials irrespective of the
experimental group. However, reduction of pain intensity was more
pronounced for distraction and reappraisal compared to acceptance.
Similarly, SC was reduced during regulation relative to control trials
in all groups, while HR showed no significant differences. Analysis of
tonic pain revealed significantly lower pain ratings for regulation
compared to control trials in all groups, however, no differences were
found in SC and HR. In conclusion, all three strategies were effective
in reducing both brief and prolonged pain stimuli. While acceptance was
less effective than distraction and reappraisal for the regulation of
brief pain stimuli, acceptance was similarly successful for tonic pain
stimuli. Future research should further test the effectivity of
regulation strategies by using a wider range of pain modalities and
stimulation durations.
