Fix It Recently, Hunter Watched an Episode of a Popular Television Program

Essay

Fix It
Recently, Hunter watched an episode of a popular television program that found cursing increases pain tolerance to a cold stimulus. He identified a number of flaws in the methodology so he decided to test the effect of cursing on pain tolerance under more controlled conditions. To ensure his sample is random, Hunter posted flyers around the psychology building asking for volunteers for a study about pain. Twenty-three individuals volunteered and each was tested individually. The procedure required them place their hand in an ice bath held constant at 1 degree Celsius and to keep it there for as long as they were able to withstand the pain. After a five-minute rest they repeated this process but this time they were told to yell curse words while their hand was in the ice bath. Hunter measured how many seconds the participants were able to keep their hand in the ice during the two trials. To maintain consistency in his study Hunter always ran the control condition (no cursing) first, and the experimental condition (cursing) second. Hunter found that people were able to keep their hand in the ice bath for a significantly longer time during the cursing condition when compared with the no-cursing condition. Hunter concluded that despite the flawed methodology in the television show's experiment, their results are valid: cursing causes an increase in pain tolerance. What do you think of Hunter's methodology?