Beyond pain: a study of pain threshold variance within dominant-submissive BDSM interactions

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2021.01.001

Commentary

BDSM is an acronym that stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism.

This study is going to focus on understanding the pain aspect in BDSM interactions...

Thirty-five couples' submissive and dominant counterparts were recruited to participate in BDSM interactions, of which 34 dominant and 33 submissive were included in the analysis.

To control for social interaction, a control group (n = 27) not interested in BDSM was included, of which 24 were included in the analysis.

Results.

(i) Baseline pain thresholds

(ii) The impact of BDSM interactions on these thresholds

(iii) differences in threshold moderating factors such as pain perception between submissive and dominant BDSM participants and controls.

We observed that BDSM practitioners had higher pain thresholds overall, and that the BSDM interaction temporarily increased the pain thresholds of submissives. Furthermore, the pain thresholds of dominant people depended on their fear of pain and their tendency to devastate pain, while submissives had less fear of pain than the control group.