Having a romantic partner present can make pain feel worse

The support of a romantic partner is often advised for painful medical procedures, but new research from UCL, King's College London and the University of Hertfordshire finds that this can actually make the pain feel worse. The study, published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, found that the pain felt by 39 women given 'pinprick' laser pulses on their fingers was not reduced by the presence of their partner. In many cases the presence of a partner made the pain feel worse, and increased more for the women who most avoided closeness in their relationships. "We were interested in the role of individuals' patterns of seeking or avoiding closeness in their relationships," explains lead author Dr Charlotte Krahé of the King's College London Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, "We wanted to test whether this personality construct, termed attachment style, might determine whether partner support decreases or heightens the experience of pain." For each of the trials, women were given a moderately painful laser pulse on one of their fingers and asked to rate the intensity of the pain. The researchers also measured how the electrical activity in their brains 'spiked' in response to the laser pulses, to examine the relation between pain reports and brain activity. Each woman also completed a questionnaire to measure the extent to which she either sought or avoided 'closeness', emotional intimacy, in relationships. The physical and psychological nature of labour pain may be different than other types of pain.