Just over two minutes of violent video was enough to make healthy adults feel pressure as painful sooner, at least on one side of the body. A humorous clip of the same length, shown to a matched group, produced no statistically significant change.
The experiment involved 152 pain-free volunteers at Linnaeus University in Sweden and was published April 1 in the Journal of Pain Research. It adds a twist to earlier work by the same lead researcher, which found a funny video could raise pain thresholds. In this study, at least, a bad mood moved pain sensitivity more clearly than a good one.
