Linguistic Indicators of Pain Catastrophizing in Patients with Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain

摘要

The present study examined markers of pain catastrophizing in the word use of patients with chronic pain. Patients (n = 71) completed the Pain Catastrophizing Scale and wrote about their life with pain. Quantitative word count analysis examined whether the essays contained linguistic indicators of catastrophizing. Bivariate correlations showed that catastrophizing was associated with greater use of first person singular pronouns, such as “I” (r = .27, p≤ .05) and pronouns referencing other people (r = 28, p≤ .05). Catastrophizing was further significantly associated with greater use of sadness (r = .35, p≤ .01) and anger (r = .30, p≤ .05) words. No significant relationships with positive emotion and cognitive process words were evident. Controlling for patients’ engagement in the writing task, gender, age, pain intensity, and neuroticism in multiple regression, the linguistic categories together uniquely explained 13.6% of the variance in catastrophizing (p≤ .001). First person singular pronouns (β = .24, p≤ .05) and words relating to sadness (β = .25, p≤ .05) were significant, and pronouns referencing other people (β = .19, p≤ .10) were trending. The results suggest that pain catastrophizing is associated with a “linguistic fingerprint” that can be discerned from patients’ natural word use.