discounting future pain effects on self-reported pain折现未来对自述疼痛疼痛的影响.pdfVIP

Neuroscience Medicine, 2010, 1, 14-19 doi:10.4236/nm.2010.11002 Published Online September 2010 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/nm) Discounting Future Pain: Effects on Self-Reported Pain 1 2 3 Pablo Brañas-Garza , Maria P. Espinosa , Maria Repolles Pro 1GLOBE: Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain; 2Economics Department, Universidad del País Vasco, Basque, Spain; 3Serv. de Anestesiología, Hospital Virgen de las Nieves, Granada, Spain. Email: pbg@ugr.es Received May 13th, 2010; revised June 23rd, 2010; accepted June 28th, 2010. ABSTRACT Empirical results are presented showing that people who acknowledge pain anticipation when expecting an injury ex- perience higher sensitivity to pain (GREP, Robinson et al., 2001). The positive correlation between sensitivity and an- ticipation is highly significant. However, no relationship is found between anticipation and pain endurance. Keywords : Discounting, Pain Anticipation, Sensitivity and Endurance 1. Introduction come for future use, show that they highly value the fu- ture as this deferral is apparently in anticipation of grea- “He who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than ter benefits accruable from the future use of such income. is necessary” Thus, they tend to hold a more optimistic view about the Lucius Annæus Seneca (c. 4 BC-65 AD) fulfilment of their expectations about future lifestyles or Humans are biologically programmed to anticipate ev