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Associations of Pain Intensity and Frequency With Loneliness, Hostility, and Social Functioning: Cross-Sectional, Longitudinal, and Within-Person Relationships

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Abstract

Background

The current studies investigated associations between pain intensity and pain frequency with loneliness, hostility, and social functioning using cross-sectional, longitudinal, and within-person data from community-dwelling adults with varying levels of pain.

Method

Secondary analysis of preexisting data was conducted. Study 1 investigated cross-sectional (baseline data: n = 741) and longitudinal (follow-up data: n = 549, observed range between baseline and follow-up: 6–53 months) associations. Study 2 tested within-person associations using daily diaries across 30 days from a subset of the participants in Study 1 (n = 69).

Results

Cross-sectionally, pain intensity and frequency were associated with higher loneliness (βintensity = 0.16, βfrequency = 0.17) and worse social functioning (βintensity = − 0.40, βfrequency = − 0.34). Intensity was also associated with higher hostility (β = 0.11). Longitudinally, pain intensity at baseline predicted hostility (β = 0.19) and social functioning (β = − 0.20) at follow-up, whereas pain frequency only predicted social functioning (β = − 0.21). Within people, participants reported higher hostility (γ = 0.002) and worse social functioning (γ = − 0.013) on days with higher pain, and a significant average pain by daily pain interaction was found for loneliness. Pain intensity did not predict social well-being variables on the following day.

Conclusion

Pain intensity and frequency were associated with social well-being, although the effects were dependent on the social well-being outcome and the time course being examined.

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Funding

This research was funded by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers F31AG048692, R01AG026006, and K02AG033629 and by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society under Award Number MB0026.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    Ian A. Boggero & Suzanne C. Segerstrom

  2. Department of Pediatrics, Division of Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, 231 Albert Sabin Way, Cincinnati, OH, 45229, USA

    Ian A. Boggero & Christopher D. King

  3. Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA

    John A. Sturgeon

  4. Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA, USA

    Anne Arewasikporn

  5. Multiple Sclerosis Center of Excellence-West, VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, WA, USA

    Anne Arewasikporn

  6. Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Saul A. Castro

  7. Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Christopher D. King

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  1. Ian A. Boggero
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Correspondence to Ian A. Boggero.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Boggero, I.A., Sturgeon, J.A., Arewasikporn, A. et al. Associations of Pain Intensity and Frequency With Loneliness, Hostility, and Social Functioning: Cross-Sectional, Longitudinal, and Within-Person Relationships. Int.J. Behav. Med. 26, 217–229 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-019-09776-5

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