EAPSI: Attenuating Pain with the Past: The Relationship between Nostalgia and Pain Sensitivity among American and Japanese Individuals

慢性疼痛的经历与较低的生活质量有关，并影响到全球约20%的成年人。据报道，疼痛在日本人中比非西班牙裔白人和其他少数族裔群体更普遍和普遍，鉴于疼痛对心理、社会和身体健康的突如其来的影响，确定能够跨文化降低疼痛体验的保护性因素非常重要。这项拟议的研究将在美国和日本的样本中测试怀旧，即对过去的伤感渴望，是否会减少人们对身体疼痛的感知。支持这些假说的数据将提供证据，证明怀旧在亚洲文化中也可以作为一种潜在的疼痛干预手段，这些文化具有更高的疼痛相关残疾发生率，并且更不愿使用药物来缓解疼痛。这项研究项目将与日本京都大学的怀旧和跨文化研究专家Kakashi Kusumi博士合作进行。尽管疼痛的经历是普遍的，但文化差异在疼痛耐受性方面是许多研究人员和医生关注的话题。尽管有证据表明，来自亚洲国家的人比来自欧洲国家和美国的人对疼痛的敏感度更高，但研究尚未检验如何利用心理资源来减少跨文化的身体疼痛感知。一些研究表明，泛文化怀旧情绪，一种对过去的感伤渴望，提供了许多心理益处(例如，乐观、积极的情感、社会联系)，其他研究将这些相同的结果与更强的疼痛韧性联系起来。在这项工作的基础上，这项奖学金将允许拟议的研究：(A)检查怀旧思维是否可以导致个人对实验诱导的疼痛不那么敏感，(B)确定可能解释怀旧和更高疼痛阈值之间关系的潜在中介变量，以及(C)检查美国和日本参与者在怀旧操纵后的疼痛体验方面是否存在文化差异。东亚和太平洋暑期研究所项目下的这个奖项支持一名美国研究生的夏季研究，由NSF和日本科学促进会共同资助。

The experience of chronic pain is associated with lower quality of life and impacts an estimated 20% of adults worldwide. With reports of pain being more prevalent and widespread in Japanese individuals than both non-Hispanic whites and other ethnic minority groups, it is important to identify protective factors that can lower the experience of pain cross-culturally given its precipitating effects on psychological, social, and physical well-being. The proposed study will test whether nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, reduces perceptions of physical pain in both American and Japanese samples. Data in support of these hypotheses will provide evidence that nostalgia can also serve as a potential pain intervention among Asian cultures that have a higher prevalence of pain-related disabilities and are more resistant to using medication to remedy their pain. This research project will be carried out in collaboration with Dr. Takashi Kusumi, an expert in nostalgia and cross-cultural research at Kyoto University in Japan.Although the experience of pain is universal, cultural differences in pain tolerance is a topic of concern for many researchers and physicians. Despite evidence demonstrating that individuals from Asian countries have higher pain sensitivity than those from European countries and the United States, research has yet to examine how psychological resources can be utilized to decrease perceptions of physical pain cross-culturally. Several studies have shown that the pancultural emotion of nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, offers many psychological benefits (e.g., optimism, positive affect, social connectedness), with other research linking these same outcomes with greater pain resilience. Building on this work, this fellowship will allow the proposed research to (a) examine whether nostalgic thinking can lead individuals to be less sensitive to experimentally-induced pain, (b) identify potential mediating variables that may explain the relationship between nostalgia and higher pain thresholds, and (c) examine whether there are cultural differences between American and Japanese participants on the experience of pain following a nostalgia manipulation.This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.