The Relationship between Fear of Social and Physical Threat and their Effects on Social Distress and Physical Pain Perception

Past research has found that measuring individuals' fear of pain predicts their physical pain perceptions: those reporting higher levels of fear of pain report higher levels of pain. We investigated links between fear of social threat and fear of physical pain, testing whether these fears predict responses to social distress and physical pain. In three studies, we found that fear of social and physical threat were related-yet distinct-psychological constructs (Study 1), that fear of social (but not physical) threat predicted the perception of social distress (Study 2), and that fear of physical (but not social) pain predicted the perception of physical pain (Study 3). Thus, we found that, similar to the influence of fear of physical pain on physical pain perception, fear of social threat moderated the perception of social distress. However, we also found that these effects were specific, such that each type of fear uniquely predicted the experience of the same type of distress. We argue that timely identification of high levels of social threat-related fear is critical for identifying individuals who will benefit most from preventative interventions aimed to limit negative cycles of high avoidance and increased social threat perception. Furthermore, our work sets a boundary condition to pain overlap theory by showing that high levels of fear of one type of pain (e.g., social) are specifically linked to increased perception of that particular type of pain (e.g., social) but not the other (e.g., physical).