This experimental study explored whether the physical symptoms of cold, pain and itchiness could be generated by visual cues, whether they varied in the ease with which they could be generated and whether they were related to negative affect. Participants were randomly allocated by group to watch one of three videos relating to cold (e.g. ice, snow, wind), pain (e.g. sporting injuries, tattoos) or itchiness (e.g. head lice, scratching). They then rated their self-reported symptoms of cold, pain and itchiness as well as their negative affect (depression and anxiety). The researcher recorded their observed behaviour relating to these symptoms. The results showed that the interventions were successful and that all three symptoms could be generated by the visual cues in terms of both self-report and observed behaviour. In addition, the pain video generated higher levels of anxiety and depression than the other two videos. Further, the degree of itchiness was related to the degree of anxiety. This symptom onset process also showed variability between symptoms with self-reported cold symptoms being greater than either pain or itchy symptoms. The results show that physical symptoms can be generated by visual cues indicating that psychological factors are not only involved in symptom perception but also in symptom onset.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 17 February 2015.
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#27,763,431
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#844
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#218,315
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Outputs of similar age from Psychology, Health & Medicine
#8
of 9 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,410,315 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 16th percentile – i.e., 16% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,111 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 8.0. This one is in the 21st percentile – i.e., 21% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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