Personality, and Pain Assessment in Childbirth of Married and Unmarried Mothers

Studies which have investigated differences in pain tolerance between extraverts and introverts have reported that the former can tolerate pain better than the latter (Petrie, 1958; Poser, 1960). Nevertheless, behaviourly it was noticed that extraverts appear to complain of pain or discomfort readily and generally to “give voice” to their feelings more than introverts, who incline to “grin and bear it” and make light of past painful experiences. Furthermore, it has been shown in drug studies that subjects react differently to pain inflicted in a laboratory to that caused in other (i.e. natural) ways even if this be more severe (Beecher, 1957). It was therefore decided to investigate this discrepancy by testing subjects undergoing “natural”, i.e. not experimentally inflicted, pain, and women in childbirth seemed a suitable group to approach.