The Effects Of Love Reward On Pain Tolerance

Pain is an unpleasant,painful experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage.It is a complex physiological and psychological process that includes emotions,cognition,motivation,and physiology.As a stimulus that can stimulate the brain's dopamine system's excitement,rewards have a significant effect on pain.Some studies have pointed out that duration of voluntary cold exposure was approximately linearly related to the logarithm of monetary reward.Romantic love refers to the state in which an individual desires to establish and maintain close relationships with certain people in behavior,cognition,and emotion.Some researchers have discovered that romantic love is a kind of reward.When an individual watches a lover's picture,name,or holds a lover's hand,it can reduce the lover's rating of pain intensity in a pain task and achieve pain relief.However,there have been many deficiencies in the research on the impact of romantic love on pain relief.For example,although studies have found that romantic love has a pain relief effect on individuals in love,it has not been compared with other forms of rewards(eg,money)and other groups(eg,single individuals).Therefore,it is not clear of the similarities and differences between love reward and other rewards;In addition,methods have been used to induce pain in the form of thermal stimulation,which induces short-term pain,while chronic pain in life lasts longer;the indicators of pain assessment only use pain intensity levels and do not involve pain tolerance.The pain tolerance is quite different from the perception of pain intensity,and it has wider application value in life;the stimulus material adopts lovers' photos or lovers' names.The stimuli associated with the lover are used to activate the psychological representation of the lover in the test,so as to achieve the effect of activating the brain reward system.However,this kind of operation is likely to bring other interference factors,such as lover pictures and friend pictures are difficult to achieve in terms of familiarity and pleasure.Therefore,in this study,it is proposed to use cold pressor pain task to induce pain,record the reported pain level and pain tolerance time,and add a single control group,systematically examine the love reward for individuals.The purpose of pain tolerance time is to reveal the particularity of love reward,to provide new evidence for a comprehensive understanding of the nature of love,and to provide references for the pain relief of individuals in life.The study included a total of three experiments.In experiment 1,we use a 2(emotional state: love,single)× 2(reward type: love reward,monetary reward)between-subject design to examine whether romantic love as a special reward can enhance the individual's pain tolerance.Under the conditions of love reward,subjects were asked to imagine that they will complete a cold pressor pain task with their partner(for single subjects,is imaginary and with their future life partner)for a period of time.The sum of the time completed by the two is fixed.Under the condition of monetary rewards,we inform the participants: The time of pain tolerance is directly proportional to the payment of the experiment.The pain tolerance time in the cold pressor pain task and the pain intensity were measured as the dependent variables.61 healthy students(aged 21.7±2.46 years;31 males and 30 females;32 love subjects,love duration 19.94±18.87months)participated in the experiment.An analysis of variance for pain tolerance and pain intensity found that both main effects and interaction effects were not significant.The reason for this result may be that the differences between the stages of romantic love were not taken into account.On the other hand,the individual differences in pain tolerance may be too great.Therefore,it may not be reasonable to adopt the between-subject design.Based on the results of experiment 1,a mix-design method was used in experiment 2 in order to examine again whether romantic love as a reward can enhance the pain tolerance of a love individual.In experiment 2,a mixed design of 3(emotional state: early stage of love,middle and late stage of love,single)× 2(reward type: love reward,monetary reward)was adopted.The emotional state variable was designed for the between-subject variable and the reward type was designed for the within-subject variable.After the official experiment was started,the baseline level of pain tolerance was measured first for all participants,and the subjects were then randomly divided into two groups.A group of participants first measured the pain tolerance under the conditions of love reward,and then measured the pain tolerance under the conditions of monetary reward;the other group reversed.Similarly,the duration of the participants' pain tolerance in the cold pressor pain task and the pain intensity were used as the dependent variables.113 healthy college students(aged 18.82±1.05 years;41 males,72 females;69 singles,44 loved ones,love time 13.66±15.15months),participated in the experiment.Repeated measures analysis of variance for pain tolerance and pain intensity under reward conditions found that the pain tolerance under the conditions of love rewards was significantly longer than the pain tolerance under the condition of money rewards in early stage of romantic love group(love length ? 6 months).This may be related to the special physiological and psychological characteristics of the subjects in the early stage of romantic love.Based on the unexpected findings of experiment 1 and experiment 2,the pain tolerance of the subjects in the early stage of love was significantly longer under the conditions of love reward than the pain tolerance under the condition of monetary reward.In experiment 3,the primary form of romantic love was tested using the method of simulated reality.That is,attractiveness,which is the main component of romantic love,influences the pain tolerance of single subjects or not.Before the experiment started,the randomly matched single men and women entered the experimental environment at the same time,the subject was informed that he/she could chat with another partner within the 15 questions.In the formal experiment,the pain tolerance of the subject was measured first,and the participants' tolerance time under the attraction reward condition was measured.Under the conditions of attraction rewards,participants were required to complete the cold pressor pain task for a period of time together with the just-talked-on partner.After the experiment was completely over,participants were asked to fill out the "Attraction Rating Scale" to assess the attractiveness score of the partner they communicated with before the experiment began.At the data analysis stage,the subjects were divided into high-attracted group and low-attracted group according to the score of the attractiveness rating scale.The difference in tolerance time and pain intensity under the experimental conditions were compared between the two groups of subjects.58 individ uals(aged 19.84±1.005 years;29 males,29 females)participated in the experiment.As a result,it was found that the duration of the test for the high attractiveness of the opposite sex was significantly longer than the time for the low attractiveness of the opposite sex.In short,under the experimental conditions,we found that: 1)romantic love as a special reward,can improve the participants' pain tolerance in the cold pressor task;2)for the early stage of love subjects,the pain tolerance under the conditions of love reward was significantly longer than the pain tolerance under monetary reward conditions(money reward range from 15 to 30 yuan);3)the attractiveness from strangers can also enhance the pain tolerance of the subject,and the single subject is attractive and heterosexual.The pain tolerance time is significantly longer for higher attractiveness than the tolerance time for low attractiveness.The results of this study show that romantic love is indeed a reward,and it has a certain contribution to the study of the stage characteristics of romantic love and the rewarding effect of love.At the same time,it has the clinical guidance for clinical patients with chronic pain to relieve pain using rewards and a realistic guidance for researchers to distinguish love and addiction.