Direct and generalized effects of three components of stress inoculation for increased pain tolerance

The relative contribution of therapists' inclusion of relaxation training, instruction in cognitive coping skills, and exposure to a stressor in the practice of Stress Inoculation were studied in a factorial design for treating pain tolerance in college students. Each of these components was associated with increased tolerance for the stressor used in training, although the interaction of relaxation and exposure to stress led to the main effects for those two components. None of these effects generalized to a second stressor unavailable during training.