Lived Environments and Pain

Overview

Interested volunteers will be prescreened over email or phone for eligibility and demographics. The study visit will be structured to contain two phases – baseline and experimental – separated by a break and lasting a total of two hours. First, participants will 1) complete a thorough informed consent process. Then, participants will 2) complete a baseline pain testing protocol, 3) complete health and pain surveys, and then be given a 10-minute break. During the second half of the lab visit, participants will 4) experience experimental induction of either an adverse environment or a neutral control condition followed immediately by 5) a subset (2-3) of pain testing procedures (one or two static and one dynamic procedure). These will be the same procedures experienced during the baseline pain testing protocol. To minimize decrements in the experimental induction, participants will be trained on the procedure for this part of the study so that they can move swiftly from the induction to the pain tests without experimenter instruction and only limited prompts to “rate” their pain. Finally, participants will 6) complete surveys assessing their lifetime exposure to adverse environments.

Inclusion criteria include overall good health, 18 years or older, with English language capability adequate to provide informed consent and complete questionnaires, non-student. Exclusion criteria include 1) any acute pain or injury or chronic pain; 2) any analgesic medication in the past three days, 3) use of anti- inflammatory, opioid, or antidepressant medication; 4) major medical illness known to cause pain, 5) cognitive impairment (e.g., dementia, mental retardation) or active or unstable psychiatric illness. (Can participate if has daily persistent pain due to work, i.e., feet/knees hurting from standing at work all day)