Percepttul and Motor Skills, 1978,47,499-502. @ Perceptual and Motor Skills 1978 AUGMENTATION-REDUCTION AND PAIN EXPERIENCE DIANA ELTON, PETER R. VAGG, AND GORDON STANLET University o f Melbourne' Summasy.-The role of augmentation-reduction in pain tolerance and threshold was examined using Petrie's (1967) criteria for classification of sub- jects. 14 augmenters did not differ from 14 reducers on pain tolerance and threshold. Trait anxiety correlated with both pain tolerance and threshold, but state anxiety did not. A number of publications, summarized by Petrie ( 1967), provided evi- dence for a relationship between perceptual variables and pain experience. She argued that individual differences in pain tolerance are part of a more general perceptual characteristic, involving augmenting or reducing all sensory inputs. Her experimental work involved classification of subjects as augmenters, re- ducers, or moderates, on the basis of a kinaesthetic size-approximation task. She then compared augmenters and reducers with regard to their responses to pain-tolerance task. Although Petrie is widely quoted in the literature on pain (Murray, 1969; Sternbach, 1968) and her basic propositions appear to have gained general acceptance, there have been relatively few exact replications of her results outside her own laboratory. Lynn and Eysenck ( 1961 ) incorporated Petrie's assertions about augmen- tation and reduction into an Eysenckian introversion-extraversion paradigm. They suggested that extraverts, i.e., Petrie's reducers, tolerste pain better than introverts, i.e., augmenters, because they are less likely to bring anxiety, "the potentiating component of pain," to the painful situation. They found that tolerance of pain was negatively correlated with neuroticism, thereby providing evidence that anxiety is an important component of pain. Other workers (Beecher, 1959; Blin & Dinnerstein, 1968; Murray, 1970) have also provided clinical and experimental support for the role of anxiety as a central variable in pain experience. Petrie ( 1967 ) supported Eysenck and Lynn's ( 1962) re- sults with regard to extraversion but claimed that neither neuroticism nor anxiety had any correlation with pain tolerance. The present study was designed to examine Petrie's claim about the role of augmentation-reduction in pain tolerance as well as examining the relation- ship between this variable and pain threshold. In addition, measures of anxi- ety state and trait were obtained. METHOD Subjects Physiotherapy students, 4 males and 24 females, aged between 17 and 21 yr. were 'The authors are grateful to Jan Herbert for assistance in collecting these data and to Miss Christean Gialamatzis for typing of the manuscript. 'Address for reprints: Diana Elton, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia.