Abstract: Based on social learning and social comparison theories, the authors investigated whether the exposure to the successful or miserable lives of others could influence participants’ pain tolerance. Results consistently showed that people who were exposed to the successful or miserable lives of others reported higher tolerance of pain than people who were exposed to the ordinary lives of others. This result was present across different samples (employee sample in Experiment 1, and university student samples in Experiment 2), different priming methods (story of a waiter’s experience in Experiment 1, and a student’s life in Experiment 2). All these findings suggest that people can adaptively select different paths to regulate themselves in order to cope with pain.

Key words: social experience, observational learning, social comparison, coping with pain, pain tolerance

摘要： 根据社会学习理论和社会比较理论, 考察看到他人成功或辛酸的生活经历是否影响人们的疼痛耐受性。研究结果发现, 看到他人成功生活经历的被试以及看到他人辛酸生活经历的被试, 都比看到他人正常生活经历的被试报告更高的疼痛耐受性。研究结果在不同的样本群体(实验1 采用员工样本, 实验2 采用大学生样本)和不同的启动实验范式下(实验1 被试看的材料是一个服务员的生活经历, 实验2 被试看的材料是大学生的生活经历)都得到证实, 表明人们能够适应性地选择不同的路径来进行自我调节和应对疼痛。

关键词: 社会体验, 观察学习, 社会比较, 疼痛应对, 疼痛耐受性