how can you tell whether you have low or high pain tolerance?
In: 0
[removed]
Studies of pain tolerance often use the _cold pressor test_ – they ask the subject to submerge their hand in ice cold water and hold it there as long as possible. The longer they can hold, the higher the pain tolerance. You would need to compare your own time to some standard for ‘high’ or ‘low’ – probably based on average times for a population of similar age and sex to yourself.
this inspired another question- is it possible to exercise pain tolerance and as a result develop a higher tolerance to pain? or is it something that is unalterable?
Perhaps a little off topic, but from a philosophical and testing point of view, the answer is that you can’t.
Even if we try to use some empirical study to try and determine different levels of pain tolerance, we can’t tell how different people experience pain, since pain is *subjective.*
For example, let’s say I’m really numb and can’t feel much at all. Even if you put me through some excruciating pain, I will not feel much of it at all. Does this mean I have a high tolerance? No, it just means I’m not able to sense the pain very well.
Similarly, another person might be very sensitive to pain, so they can feel it very easily. Comparing me to them, it might seem that they have a lower pain tolerance, but in fact it might just be the case that they are able to feel the pain while I’m not.
It could be that the other person can stand the pain much longer compared to what I could do, if I was able to feel the same amount of pain.
Will this make a practical difference? No, in practice people usually have some form of understanding or consensus about what they mean when talking about ‘pain tolerance’.
I would however like to argue that having ‘high pain tolerance’ is not the same as being able to withstand a great amount of pain, at least not when talking about it in a general sense, since our ability to *feel* the pain plays a major role as well.
Nuances like this are very important to consider when designing tests or conducting research. What we *think* we are testing, might not be what we are *actually* testing. Thus, we need to think very carefully about testing and the results it produces.
Latest Answers