Motivations underlying self-infliction of pain during thinking for pleasure.

ABSTRACT: Previous research suggested that people prefer to administer unpleasant electric shocks to themselves rather than being left alone with their thoughts because engagement in thinking is an unpleasant activity. The present research examined this negative reinforcement hypothesis by giving participants a choice of distracting themselves with the generation of electric shock causing no to intense pain. Four experiments (N = 254) replicated the result that a large proportion of participants opted to administer painful shocks to themselves during the thinking period. However, they administered strong electric shocks to themselves even when an innocuous response option generating no or a mild shock was available. Furthermore, participants inflicted pain to themselves when they were assisted in th

SUBMITTER: Eder AB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9253005 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature