• Zina Trost, Dimitri Van Ryckeghem, Whitney Scott, Adam Guck, and Tine Vervoort.
• Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama. Electronic address: ztrost1@uab.edu.
• J Pain. 2016 Nov 1; 17 (11): 1207-1216.

AbstractThe current study examined the relationship between perceived injustice and attentional bias (AB) toward pain among individuals with chronic low back pain asked to perform and appraise the pain and difficulty of a standardized set of common physical activities. A pictorial dot-probe task assessed AB toward pain stimuli (ie, pain faces cueing pain), after which participants performed the physical tasks. Participants also rated face stimuli in terms of pain, sadness, and anger expression. As hypothesized, perceived injustice was positively associated with AB toward pain stimuli; additionally, perceived injustice and AB were positively associated with appraisals of pain and difficulty. Counter to expectations, AB did not mediate the relationship between perceived injustice and task appraisals, suggesting that AB is insufficient to explain this relationship. Exploratory analyses indicated that participants with higher levels of perceived injustice rated stimulus faces as sadder and angrier; no such differences emerged for pain ratings. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the association between perceived injustice and AB toward pain, as well as perceived injustice and in vivo appraisals of common physical activity. Results extend existing literature and suggest that attentional and potential interpretive bias should be considered in future research.Copyright © 2016 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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