Pain Tolerance and Narcotic Addiction

The present study was designed to examine the relation between pain tolerance, as measured by the cold‐pressor test, narcotic addiction and some aspects of personality. The subjects used were two groups each of twenty‐four female prisoners; one group comprised former addicts, the other non‐addicts. The two groups were very significantly different on the cold‐pressor test, with the addicts showing much less pain tolerance than the controls. Only a very slight relation was found between pain tolerance and neuroticism and no relation was found between tolerance for pain and extraversion.