No abstract

From earlier work on the effects of instructional sets, it was hypothesized that subcultural differences in attitudes toward pain should be reflected in psycho‐physiological correlates. Yankee, Irish. Jewish, and Italian housewives participated in threshold and magnitude estimation studies of electric shock, and their skin potential responses to repetitive electrical stimulation were recorded. Significant differences in upper thresholds and in the adaptation of diphasic palmar skin potentials are consonant with attitudinal differences, and such differences support earlier findings on the influence of sets on psychophysiological functioning.

SYNOPSIS The results of the study support the findings that vascular headache patients obtain lower MMPI scores than do muscle contraction and mixed headache patients. We suggest that this may be due to more frequent and longer pain‐free intervals. We also note a tendency for male muscle contraction headache patients to be somewhat more morally self‐righteous than the other categories, but this finding requires confirmation. Comparisons between these headache patients (all categories) and 50,000 general medical patients showed the former to obtain scores markedly greater than the latter on most scales; this also may reflect greater duration and severity of subjective distress.