Pain research & management : the journal of the Canadian Pain Society = journal de la société canadienne pour le traitement de la douleur
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Exposure to virtual social stimuli modulates subjective pain reports.
Contextual factors, including the gender of researchers, influence experimental and patient pain reports. It is currently not known how social stimuli influence pain percepts, nor which types of sensory modalities of communication, such as auditory, visual or olfactory cues associated with person perception and gender processing, produce these effects. ⋯ Further research on how contextual factors, such as the vocal properties of health care examiners and exposure to background voices, may influence momentary pain perception is necessary for creating more standardized methods for measuring patient pain reports in clinical settings.