Wheel of fortune game
Pain, pain
A wheel of fortune game, adapted from a previously established version (In the In The participants were instructed that there were two types of trials: trials in which they could choose a color to bet on the outcome of the wheel of fortune and trials in which they had no choice. Specifically, they were told that in the first type of trials they could use the left and right mouse button, respectively, to choose between the pink and blue section of the wheel of fortune. Participants were further instructed that if the wheel lands on the color they had chosen they will win, that is that the stimulation temperature will decrease, while if the wheel lands on the other color, they will lose, that is that the stimulation temperature will increase. For the second type of trials, participants were instructed that they could not choose a color, but were to press a black button, and that after the wheel stopped spinning the temperature would by chance either increase, decrease, or remain constant.After the interval of the temperature change (in the test trials: outcome of the wheel), participants rated the perceived intensity of the current temperature using the same VAS as described above (In total, the wheel of fortune game comprised of 45 trials, split into five blocks. Each block consisted of 4 Pain relief was implemented by a reduction of the stimulation intensity of 3 °C and pain increase was implemented by a rise of 1 °C. The magnitude of these temperature steps was determined and optimized in pilot experiments with the aim of inducing potent pain relief and pain increase without inducing ceiling and floor effects.Although the main focus of the study was to test different effects on pain relief as implemented in win trials and their corresponding control trials with a decrease in nociceptive input, lose trials and their complementing control trials were crucial to the experimental design. First, for playing the game lose trials were an integral part because of the implemented likelihood for winning which necessarily needs to be accompanied by the chance of losing. Additionally, the risk of losing was thought to increase the participants’ engagement in the game, which in turn was expected to enhance the motivated state induced by playing the wheel of fortune game. Second, they allowed for testing whether pain modulation was driven by controllability or unspecific effects such as arousal and distraction in test compared to control trials of the wheel of fortune game (All experimental procedures involving thermal stimulation were controlled by custom-programmed Presentation scripts (Presentation software, Version 17.0, 