Psychiatry & Psychology Health

Mental toughness is a multidimensional construct that has been

associated with increased resilience to stress and the ability to

overcome setbacks. Mental toughness has mainly been researched

in professional sportspeople, demonstrating that mental toughness

is associated with greater pain tolerance and improved rehabilitation

following injury. The current study aimed to examine whether mental toughness was associated with measures of pain tolerance, assessed using the cold pressor task (CPT), in a non-specialized sample. Further, the study aimed to examine the effect of introducing social and personal competition on measures of pain tolerance. Eighty-six (86 females; age: 23.14, 5.84) participants attended four experimental test sessions in a counterbalanced order. A Social competition was introduced by having two participants complete the CPT at the same time. A personal competition was introduced

by having participants perform against a timer and against a personal

immersion time goal. Differences in pain tolerance were assessed using the CPT with the following outcome variables: total immersion time, time of pain onset since immersion (pain threshold) and post-CPT self-reports of pain. Results indicated that there was no effect of competition condition on measures of pain tolerance. Increased mental toughness was associated with increased pain tolerance, evidenced by longer immersion times and increased pain thresholds. There was no association between mental toughness and post-CPT self-reports of pain. These findings support and extend previous research and suggest that mental toughness may have an important role, and be a target for intervention, in improving tolerance to pain in the clinical population.