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A person perceives severe pain less painful if it comes on immediately
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Franklin Roosevelt already suggested that a person should be afraid only of his own fear, recent studies have confirmed these words: the expectation of painful sensations turns out to be much worse for a person than pain. In other words, a person perceives even very strong pain less painfully if less time is spent on its expectation.
Classical theories of decision-making state that people attach less importance to delayed events, i.e. the so-called time discount comes into play. But when it comes to pain, such theories completely lose their meaning. This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that waiting is unpleasant in itself, and scientists compare waiting for pain to horror.
Such conclusions were made by British scientists from the Imperial University of London. A group of scientists led by Giles Storey conducted tests on 35 volunteers who agreed to be tested with small electric shocks for money. The volunteers could independently choose the time after which the electric shock would follow and the strength of the electric shocks. The maximum shock force did not exceed 14 W, each procedure included at least two electric shocks. Young people had to independently choose whether to receive 9 shocks immediately or six shocks, but after some time. Most of the participants (71%) of the experiment chose more shocks, but immediately, than to languish painfully, waiting for an unpleasant execution. Specialists, by changing the impulses, determined that the fear of upcoming pain multiplies exponentially with an untimely onset of pain.
The volunteers showed similar results in a test in which they had to wait for a prospective dentist. As Carnegie Mellon College professor George Loewenstein stated, the studies show that the fear with which a person expects painful sensations to occur is so strong that it can completely change a person’s perception of a time discount. The scientist also suggested that most painful sensations in our lives come not from real experience, but from the expectation and memories of these same sensations.
According to the scientists themselves, such a study is of great importance for medicine, since understanding how a person relates to pain is important for subsequent treatment. The head of the research group, Giles Storey, is sure that one should not focus a person's attention on the expectation of pain; it is necessary to minimize the fear of pain. The specialists hope that the psychological experiment they conducted will help develop diagnostic tools, since, taking into account a person's preferences, it will be possible to determine whether he or she is able to make a healthy choice.
This is not the first time that scientists have conducted studies of pain sensations. A little earlier, specialists suggested that a violation of the structural connections of the brain is the cause of chronic pain in humans, and that the occurrence of this type of pain may not be related to the underlying injury.
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