Memory for pain and the delayed effects of distraction

In spite of the popular belief that distraction is effective in coping with pain, there is evidence that a neutral distracter does not reduce people's reports of pain. However, it may be that distraction's effect is not detectable in immediate ratings, when the need to rate the pain forces the sufferer to concentrate on it. Instead, after a delay, when the pain itself is gone and the person must base the judgment on a memory of the event, having been distracted may attenuate the recalled pain. An experiment with 72 undergraduate participants tested this proposition, with 1 group highly distracted during cold-presser pain and 1 group slightly distracted. Half of each group rated the pain immediately, and half waited 10 min after the event to rate the pain. The participants who gave immediate ratings showed no effect of distraction, but for participants who waited 10 min before giving their ratings, high distraction led to reduced reports of pain.