Effects of Expectations and Bodily Sensations on Self-Reports of Premenstrual Symptoms

Abstract

Two experiments examined expectations and bodily sensations in premenstrual symptom reports. Women took a fictitious test that indicated they were either “premenstrual” or “intermenstrual.” In Experiment 1, 48 women were studied during their premenstrual phase. In Experiment 2, 82 women were studied during either their premenstrual or intermenstrual phase. Individual differences in retrospective premenstrual distess were assessed prior to the experiments. Both experiments revealed that the higher the woman's retrospective reports of premenstrual distress, the more symptoms she reported in the lab during her premenstrual phase, regardless of what the test indicated. However, women who were told they were premenstrual reported greater symptoms than women who were told they were intermenstrual. In summary, although expectations affect women's symptom reports regardless of their actual phase and history of reported symptoms, premenstrual symptom reports cannot be dismissed as simply expectations, because some women do experience greater symptoms as they approach menstruation.

Moderating effects of mood monitoring on premenstrual dysphoria

“…Such differential effects may help to explain discrepancies in previous findings concerning the impact of the menstrual cycle, since selective sampling of participant groups might magnify or minimise cycle-related effects. Further, our predictions would be consistent with explanations for previous discrepancies in terms of expectations and body sensations (Klebanov & Jemmott, 1992). In particular, our argument is that expectations about dysphoria during the premenstrual phase coupled with intensive monitoring of affective signals tends to intensify any negative reaction.…”

Do Healthy People Worry? Modern Health Worries, Subjective Health Complaints, Perceived Health, and Health Care Utilization

“…It could be argued that stress may influence this relationship as it has been shown to influence one's perception of sensations as indicating disease as well as increasing the likelihood to seek health care [30]. In addition, prior experience, expectations, and the seriousness of the symptoms can all exert influence on symptom appraisal [31][32][33]. For instance, those who have repeatedly dealt with a medical condition tend to rate it as less threatening than those who have no history of it [31].…”

Premenstrual distress predicts panic-relevant responding to a CO2 challenge among young adult females

“…The body sensations hypothesis posits that women accurately report bodily changes during their premenstrual phase (Klebanov & Jemmet, 1992). The expectations hypothesis proposes that women are impacted by cultural beliefs and stereotypes, which influence them to over-report premenstrual symptoms (Klebanov & Jemmet, 1992). A third hypothesis, the menstrual reactivity hypothesis, combines and applies the previous hypotheses to high AS women, specifically.…”