How to reduce pain recollection
A recent study published in the journal Pain showed that adding a non-painful stimulus at the end of a Pap smear can reduce pain recollection. The study, titled “Adding a Nonpainful End to Reduce Pain Recollection of Pap Smear Screening: A Randomized Controlled Trial,” was conducted by Taiwanese researchers and involved 266 women.
The study involved an intervention group that received a modified Pap test, where the operator kept the speculum still in the vagina for an additional 15 seconds after rotating it back, instead of immediately removing it. Participants in the modified Pap test group were unaware of this additional step, as they were behind a privacy curtain.
The outcomes of the study included recalled pain after Pap smear screening, real-time pain, and 1-year willingness to receive further Pap tests. Among 266 subjects, the modified Pap group experienced lower 5-minute recalled pain than the traditional Pap group on a 1 to 5 numeric scale and on a 0 to 10 visual analog scale. Subgroup analyses showed that these results were not affected by predicted pain, demographic, or socioeconomic characteristics, but it was more apparent in postmenopausal women. Additionally, the modified Pap test attenuated 1-year recalled pain on both pain scales and increased the 1-year willingness grade to receive further Pap tests.
This technique could potentially be applied to many other painful procedures, including Botox injections, blood draws, vaccine injections, dental procedures, and more.
Sounds like Kahneman’s peak-end rule.
From Wikipedia: “(…)A 1993 study titled “When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better End” by Kahneman, Fredrickson, Charles Schreiber, and Donald Redelmeier provided groundbreaking evidence for the peak–end rule. Participants were subjected to two different versions of a single unpleasant experience. The first trial had subjects submerge a hand in 14 °C water for 60 seconds. The second trial had subjects submerge the other hand in 14 °C water for 60 seconds, but then keep their hand submerged for an additional 30 seconds, during which the temperature was raised to 15 °C. Subjects were then offered the option of which trial to repeat. Against the law of temporal monotonicity, subjects were more willing to repeat the second trial, despite a prolonged exposure to uncomfortable temperatures. Kahneman et al. concluded that “subjects chose the long trial simply because they liked the memory of it better than the alternative (or disliked it less).”[3]
Similarly, a 1996 study by Kahneman and Redelmeier assessed patients’ appraisals of uncomfortable colonoscopy or lithotripsy procedures and correlated the remembered experience with real-time findings. They found that patients consistently evaluated the discomfort of the experience based on the intensity of pain at the worst (peak) and final (end) moments. This occurred regardless of length or variation in intensity of pain within the procedure.[4](…)”