The effects of anger and relaxation forms of in vivo emotive imagery on pain tolerance

To examine the effects of 'in vivo' emotive imagery on pain tolerance, 80 subjects were stratified on sex, and assigned randomly to no-treatment control, neutral imagery, anger emotive imagery, or relaxation emotive imagery conditions during which they were asked to immerse their hands in icewater (0°C) for as long as possible. A sex by treatment analysis of variance followed by Tukey post hoc comparisons showed that anger 'in vivo' emotive imagery was significantly more effective for female subjects than no-treatment control procedures. No significant differences were noted in the male sample.