Browsing by Subject "Competition (Psychology) -- Sex differences"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    An Investigation of Stress-Induced Analgesia in Cognitive Competitive Task
    (2001) Lauber, Katherine; Sternberg, Wendy
    Stress-induced analgesia is a phenomenon that has been demonstrated on multiple occasions in humans in laboratory settings (Willer et al., 1981; Jungkunz et al., 1984). Most research on stress-induced analgesia in humans has focused on exercise and athletic-competition produced analgesia. Previous studies in this laboratory have been aimed at discovering what aspects of athletic competition create analgesia. This study is specifically targeted at investigating the cognitive competitive aspects of a sedentary task. This study focuses on the cognitive competitive mindset aspect of competition and questions whether that mindset can create analgesia. Sex-differences in competition are also a large interest of this study. 48 subjects (24 male, 24 female) from the Haverford College community participated in one of two competitive tasks, a video game or word games. The study is a 2x2 mixed factorial design, with sex of subject and day (baseline vs. competition) being the two independent variables. After a baseline session or competing in one of the competitive tasks, subjects completed a cold-pressor test as a pain measure to determine analgesic effects. Pain data, mood scale ratings, physiological data and questionnaire data about the competitive task were then compared to baseline ratings in each subject. The study produced no significant differences in pain rating as a result of competition. However, mood scale (SSR) ratings and physiological data acquired from the subjects demonstrated significant levels of stress in the subjects from baseline to task days. Reasons for why seemingly significant levels of stress and arousal in the subjects failed to produce analgesia are discussed and possible areas of future research are suggested.
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    Competition, Cooperation, and Pain Sensitivity
    (2012) Xiang, William W.; Sternberg, Wendy
    Pain is often associated with athletic competition. Studies have shown that competition produced an analgesic effect in male and female athletes. However, analgesic effects in athletes and non-athletes in different levels of competition have not yet been systematically investigated. This experiment evaluated pain sensitivity on several different measures in athletes and non-athletes before and after participating in one of four conditions: completing a puzzle, cycling on a stationary bicycle alone, cooperatively cycling alongside a confederate, or competitively cycling alongside a confederate. The study did not find significant results regarding different levels of competition and analgesia. Although no significant results were found, some interesting patterns were observed with the gender-specific cooperative condition. Women in the cooperative condition demonstrated increase in pain sensitivity, unlike results found in previous studies on exercise and competition. Possible reasons for this increase in pain sensitivity could be due to personality trait differences in cooperation compared to competition or participants empathizing for his or her partner's physical pain while cycling. Our findings suggest that the nature of cooperation causes different analgesic responses from interpersonal competition.
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    Competition, Cooperation, and Pain Sensitivity
    (2012) Ferri, Josie; Sternberg, Wendy
    The sharp decrease in pain sensitivity during and immediately following competition experienced by athletes is a quintessential example of stress-induced analgesia. While anecdotal evidence exists regarding this phenomenon, research has yet to methodically investigate responses to painful stimuli during stressful competitive scenarios. The present study aimed to determine the competitive psychological scenario that would induce the greatest stress response and effort exerted, and therefore the greatest analgesic response. The results demonstrate that our scenarios induced a mild analgesic effect in cold pressor and thermal pain testing as well as a physiological change, particularly heart rate, proportional to the level of competition. Our experiment contributes to the current research data identifying the relationship between competition, gender, athletic status, and stress-induced analgesia.
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    Competition, Cooperation, and Pain Sensitivity
    (2012) Selsor, Margaret; Sternberg, Wendy
    Prior research has shown how competition and exercise increase pain tolerance. However, the specific effects of cooperation in competition on pain sensitivity have not been thoroughly examined. In our study, we had 80 subjects (40 males, 40 females; 40 athletes, 40 non-athletes) randomly assigned to one of four conditions: a control task, biking in isolation, biking cooperatively with a confederate, and biking competitively against a confederate, and they completed pre- and post-test pain measures (cold pressor test, thermal scaling, and thermal pain threshold). We had three main hypotheses: (I) subjects in the competitive condition will elicit the greatest analgesic response (followed by cooperative, isolated, and control), (2) athletes will have higher pain tolerances, a greater analgesic response to the exercise conditions, and a larger rate of RPE, and (3) females will have a greater analgesic response to the exercise condition, and males would have a greater pain tolerance overall. Although most of our hypotheses were not supported, we discuss the implications and ideas for future research.
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    The Effects of Academic Competition on Pain Perception
    (2005) Gardner-Mims, William
    Competition in both an athletic environment and the laboratory have been shown to produce analgesic effects. Gender interactions are present in these manipulations, particularly in the laboratory. The current study looks to further the understanding of these effects by examining a task that should be equally engaging to both male and female subjects, an academic aptitude competition, and also examining subject's pain response in the middle of the manipulation, as opposed to before or after. Subjects competed for a monetary prize by completing a written test in a certain time limit. Despite the aim of a gender neutral manipulation, gender effects were found for all three pain measures, heat withdrawal temperature, cold pressor intensity and cold pressor unpleasantness. The results showed male subjects as being more sensitive to pain after the competition as opposed to a baseline day, and female subjects as showing either no effect or an analgesic reaction. The results are discussed in terms of gender differences in response to competition.