However, they were shown a smiling face and a sad face instead of numbers. To assess the mood of the participants, they were asked to rate themselves on a scale from 0 indicating bad mood to 100 indicating good mood.

Their mood does not improve much after cash rewards compared to people without pain. In previous research, it was noticed that individuals who have been diagnosed with long term pain perform poorly on such tasks. The researchers used a method known as the Fribourg Reward Task, also used in similar studies earlier. Some of the types of pain experienced by people in the sub-clinical group were headaches, backaches, pain in the arms or legs, muscle cramps, and chest pains. The study divided the sample of 79 students into two groups, one with participants not suffering from any pain and the second belonging to the sub-clinic population. This paper was published in the Humanities and Social Sciences Communication of Nature.

The researchers found that money as a reward does not improve mood in students with pain, indicating that pain has a negative effect on overall mood. Would it be the same with people whose pain is not severe enough to consult a doctor and get it diagnosed, that is, sub-clinical?Ī research team comprising individuals from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), University of Fribourg, Switzerland,, India, University of Zurich, Switzerland, and Harvard University, USA, collectively published an article about how cash rewards affect the mood of university students who experience a certain amount of pain everyday. Research has shown that individuals diagnosed with long-term pain often experience a negative mood.

Money moods