| Abstract: |
Numerical self-report scales are extensively used in economics, psychology,
and even medicine to quantify subjective feelings, ranging from life
satisfaction to the experience of pain. These scales are often criticized for
lacking an objective foundation, and defended on the grounds of empirical
performance. We focus on the case of pain measurement, where existing
self-reported measures are the workhorse but known to be inaccurate and
difficult to compare across individuals. We provide a new measure, inspired by
standard economic elicitation methods, that quantifies the negative value of
acute pain in monetary terms, making it comparable across individuals. In
three preregistered studies, 330 healthy participants were randomly allocated
to receive either only a high- or only a low-pain stimulus or a high-pain
stimulus after having double-blindly received a topical analgesic or a
placebo. In all three studies, the new measure greatly outperformed the
existing self-report scales at distinguishing whether participants were in the
more or the less painful condition, as confirmed by effect sizes, Bayesian
factor analysis, and regression-based predictions. |