Emotional regulation is an important variable in the experience of pain. Currently, there
are no experimental investigations of the relation between emotional regulation and pain. The goal
of the present study work was to analyze differences in pain perception and mood generated by the
cold-pressor (CPT) experimental paradigm in women with high and low emotional regulation. Two
groups of women were formed as a function of their level of emotional regulation: women with
high emotional repair (N = 24) and women with low emotional repair (N = 28), all of whom performed
the CPT. The results show that the women with a high score in emotional repair reported having experienced
less sensory pain and affective pain during the immersion, as well as a more positive affective
state before beginning the task. During the experimental task, they also reported a better mood,
thus displaying lower impact of the experience of pain.
Perspective: Emotional regulation is proposed as a key element to manage the emotional reaction
that accompanies the experience of acute pain experimentally induced by the CPT experimental
paradigm in a sample of healthy women.