Confronting the Unknown: Pain Catastrophizing, Emotion Regulation, Psychopathy, and Associations With Uncertainty

Abstract: Intolerance of uncertainty concerns how one views and reacts touncertainty, where one who’s highly intolerant would find it verydiscomforting when confronted with uncertain situations. The purposeof this study was to examine the associations between intolerance ofuncertainty, pain catastrophizing, emotion regulation andpsychopathic traits. These variables were to be examined in thecontext of a Beads Task and a Cold Pressor Test (CPT). Wehypothesized that there would be a positive significant associationbetween intolerance of uncertainty, pain catastrophizing, emotionregulation, psychopathic traits. We also hypothesized that there wouldbe a difference depending on the difficulty of the Beads Task. To doso, data was collected from 60 university students (32 females and 28males). The results showed that there was a significant, positiveassociation between intolerance of uncertainty, pain catastrophizing,emotion regulation and the Beads Task measurements. Some of theseresults were similar to previous studies.