title: Effects of responsibility and mood on painful task persistence.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Not just avoidance behaviour, but also painful task persistence might be a risk factor for development and maintenance of pain complaints. In seeking to understand these dysfunctional patterns of task performance, it has been suggested that mood influences the individuals' motivation to persist in a task depending on the interpretation of current mood within a certain motivational context. The aim of the present study was to test the effects of a social responsibility context and mood on persistence on a painful finger pressing task.
  
  
  METHODS
  A 2 Mood (positive vs. negative) × 2 Responsibility (high vs. neutral) between-subjects factorial design was used in which 79 healthy participants (53 women; mean age = 22.99 years, SD = 4.77) performed the finger pressing task.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The results show that mood and sense of responsibility independently influence task persistence: participants in a negative as opposed to positive mood spent more time on the task; the same was true for participants who reported a stronger sense of responsibility. In addition, an increase in pain during the task was associated with longer task persistence. No effect of pain-related fear on task persistence was found.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This experimental study was the first to demonstrate an effect of sense of responsibility on persistence in a painful physical task.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Psychological Science, Research Group Behavioural Medicine, Maastricht University, PO Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. Ken.Ceulemans@maastrichtuniversity.nl
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ceulemans
authors.forename: Petra A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Karsdorp
authors.forename: Johan W S
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Vlaeyen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D005385:Fingers / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012941:Social Responsibility; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult