• Suvin Choi and Sang-Gue Park.
• Da Vinci College of General Education, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea.
• Explore (NY). 2021 Mar 18.

ContextThe analgesic effect of music has long been reported.ObjectiveTo assess how anxiety-related psychological states affect the analgesic effect of music using the cold pressor task (CPT).DesignA 3-period × 3-sequence crossover design was adopted; three conditions were used: "no sound," "music-listening," and "news-listening."SettingPARTICIPANTS: Forty-nine participants were included.InterventionsAfter completing five anxiety-related psychological instruments (Anxiety Sensitivity Index [ASI]-16, ASI-Revised, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory [STAI]-S, STAI-T, and Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale-20), the participants were allocated to the low- or high-anxiety group. The high- and low-anxiety groups were defined based on cutoff points according to the distributions and characteristics of the five instruments.Main Outcome MeasuresPain responses, such as pain tolerance time, pain intensity, and pain unpleasantness, were measured on the CPT. Pain responses in the music-listening condition were also compared to those in the other two conditions via pairwise comparisons within each anxiety group.ResultsThe Cronbach alpha of the five instruments ranged from 0.866 to 0.95, indicating that they were reliable. Pain responses in the music-listening condition in the low-anxiety groups based on any of the five scales were significantly different from those in the other conditions, but this effect was not found in the high-anxiety groups. This study demonstrates that anxiety-related psychological states can predict the analgesic effect of music on pain responses measured by the CPT and suggests that music may be beneficial as a pain management tool in low-anxiety groups.Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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