Citation: Wright, R. C., Junghaenel, D. U., Rivas, R., Hristidis, V., & Robbins, M. L. (2021). A new approach to capturing pain disclosure in daily life in-person and online. Journal of Health Psychology, 26(13), 2577-2591. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105320918322
Continuing with the idea of how to measure pain and using actual pain words to do so, there are three cool things that emerge in the literature.
1. When recording people in their everyday lives, people talk about pain in different ways, depending on their condition. For example, people with rheumatoid arthritis use more affective pain words than people with breast cancer.
2. In their daily lives, they also end up disclosing pain to different people more frequently. People with breast cancer talk about their pain to their partner more often and people with rheumatoid arthritis talk about pain to their friends/family more often.
3. When people are seeking pain support online, others start to match their pain words in their responses! This could signify more empathy and support in these interactions.