Dreading pain can be worse than pain itself

Faced with inevitable pain, most people would choose to get it out of the way as soon as possible, according to a new study. Researchers from the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) at Imperial College London and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL asked 35 volunteers to choose between electric shocks of different intensity occurring at different times. They found that most people chose to hasten the pain, and would even accept more severe pain to avoid having to wait for it. A smaller proportion preferred to put it off into the future. They found similar results when they asked the volunteers to choose between imagined dental appointments involving different levels of pain. The study, which was funded by the Wellcome Trust , is published in PLOS Computational Biology . The anticipation of pain is a major source of misery.
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