The effects of anger and relaxation forms of in vivo emotive imagery on pain tolerance.

To examine the effects of "in vivo' emotive imagery on pain tolerance, 40 male and 40 female college students were stratified on sex and assigned randomly to no-treatment control, neutral imagery, anger emotive imagery, or relaxation emotive imagery conditions during which they were asked to immerse their hands in ice water (0 °C) for as long as possible. A sex by treatment analysis of variance followed by Tukey post hoc comparisons showed that anger "in vivo' emotive imagery was significantly more effective for females than no-treatment control procedures. No significant differences were noted in males. (French summary) (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)