Multi-sensory Responsiveness and Personality Traits Predict Daily Pain Sensitivity

Abstract

Background: A continuous effort has been devoted to identifying factors that contribute to individual differences in pain perception. Amongst the personality traits, Neuroticism is assumed to be the most significant moderator of experimental and clinical pain. Multi-sensory responsiveness to daily sensations has been shown to be associated with pain perception. Yet, neither the relationship between personality traits and multisensory responsiveness nor the impact of both these factors to pain perception have been examined. Thus, this study aims to explore the contribution of both multi-sensory responsiveness and personality traits to pain perception in a daily context. Methods: A community-based sample of 204 adults completed the Sensory Responsiveness Questionnaire-Intensity Scale (SRQ-IS); the Big Five Inventory (BFI); and the Pain Sensitivity Questionnaire (PSQ). Results: The partial eta-square demonstrated that the SRQ-IS Aversive sub-scale score had the strongest relationship with the PSQ-Total score, accounting for 9% of the variation. The regression coefficient relating PSQ-Total score with SRQ-IS Aversive, and BFI sub-scales of Extraversion, Neuroticism and Openness-to-Experience scores was found to be r = 0.39 (p < 0.0001), accounting for 16% of the variance, and yielding a large effect size. Discussion: To the best of our knowledge this is the first study to report on the interplay between aversive responsiveness to daily sensations and personality traits of Neuroticism, Openness-to-Experience, and Extraversion as contributing factors to daily pain sensitivity, amongst which aversive responsiveness was found as the major contributing factor. This study may broaden the understanding of the pain experience variability, both in practice and in experimental research.

More Insight on the Role of Personality Traits and Sensitivity to Experimental Pain

“…23 In this study, a higher mean catastrophizing score was found in HSP compared to LSP individuals. This finding is in line with previous compelling evidence showing that catastrophizing is associated with sensitivity to pain in experimental evoked pain models, 3 when using self-report pain questionnaires, 2,6,8 and in relation to clinical pain intensity. 16,23 This evidence suggests that pain catastrophizing is a stable response mode to painful experiences.…”

“…5 Therefore, individuals high in neuroticism could engage in a pattern of thinking that leads them to catastrophize or magnify the negative aspect of their situation. The association between neuroticism and catastrophizing are in line with several previous studies in healthy subjects, 2,6,8,15 as well as in clinical settings. 19,21 Our results therefore further support the notion that neuroticism may serve as a key personality trait that along with catastrophizing as a mediator, may relate to a higher sensitivity to pain.…”

“…1,2 Although it is widely recognized that inter-individual differences exist, studies have yielded conflicting evidence regarding the contribution of personality traits and cognitive-affective factors to these variations. [3][4][5] Using experimental pain models, numerous studies on healthy subjects showed relationships between sensitivity to pain and the personality traits of neuroticism, [6][7][8][9][10] extraversion, [11][12][13] and pain catastrophizing. [14][15][16][17] For example, individuals with high scores of neuroticism exhibited a short pain tolerance, 9 a high pain intensity 10 and high scores on self-reported sensitivity to pain questionnaires; 6,8 subjects with high scores of extraversion demonstrated a long pain tolerance 12 and high pain thresholds; 13 and finally, participants with high scores of catastrophizing reported a high pain intensity 16,18 and short pain tolerance.…”

Dispositional and situational personal features and acute post-collision head and neck pain: Double mediation of pain catastrophizing and pain sensitivity

“…In regard to the personality traits themselves, while neuroticism and extraversion have been widely explored in previous pain literature [ 24 , 25 ], the role of conscientiousness seems to be less investigated. Individuals with high scores of conscientiousness are characterized by high accountability as well as ethical responsibility and trustworthiness [ 63 – 65 ].…”

Unified neural pathways that gate affective pain and multisensory innate threat signals to the amygdala

“…People with affective pain disorders, such as migraine, and fibromyalgia experience chronic pain and suffer from hypersensitivity to normal sensory stimuli (Demarquay and Mauguière, 2016; Harriott and Schwedt, 2014; Harte et al, 2016; López-Solà et al, 2017). Further, normal sensory stimuli often trigger or aggravate their pain symptoms (Bar-Shalita and Cermak, 2020; Bar-Shalita et al, 2019). Surprisingly, the gene Cacna1a , which has been linked to migraines, is highly enriched in both CGRP PBel and CGRP SPFp neurons (Figure 4).…”