People who practice BDSM have higher thresholds for pain, according to a study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. The study also found evidence that engaging in a BDSM experience can further boost pain threshold among submissives.
BDSM is a term that describes sexual roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, domination, submission, sadism, and masochism. All practices are consensual and usually involve two partners who adopt the roles of dominant and submissive. Play often involves the infliction of pain from the dominant partner toward the submissive.
A team of researchers led by Elise Wuyts was interested in studying the role of pain within BDSM interactions. Specifically, the researchers launched a study to investigate how pain threshold and attitudes and assumptions about pain might differ among practitioners of BDSM compared to non-practitioners. A final sample of 34 dominant-submissive BDSM couples and 24 control participants was recruited.
The BDSM couples were tested during an evening of pain play at an event at a BDSM club in Belgium. An experimenter conducted two different types of pain threshold tests that required participants to indicate when the sensations became painful. The tests were conducted on three separate occasions throughout the night — before pain play, directly after play, and 15-20 minutes after play. The control participants experienced the same pain threshold tests during a night out at a bar, also on three occasions separated by similar time intervals.
All participants additionally completed questionnaires that included demographic measures, health measures (e.g., Body Mass Index, heart rate, blood pressure), and assessments for fear of pain and the tendency to catastrophize pain (minor, severe, and medical).
The researchers found that the BDSM participants had higher pain thresholds compared to the control participants. This was true for both dominants and submissives, and regardless of participants’ age, gender, BMI, or scores on Beck’s Depression Inventory.
Interestingly, submissives tended to show an increase in pain threshold following the BDSM pain play, although the effect did not reach significance. They were also less likely to catastrophize pain, as indicated by significantly lower scores on the pain catastrophizing scale.
Wuyts and colleagues discuss several reasons why BDSM practitioners might have a higher pain threshold. From a biological standpoint, experiencing repetitive pain can lead to habituation, a reduced physiological response to pain. It is also of note that the submissives showed heightened endocannabinoid levels after the pain play, which has been connected to elevated pain thresholds. Further, sexual arousal has been found to have a pain-relieving effect and to increase pain threshold.
The authors also discuss psychological factors that may be at play. For one, social bonding and trust can raise pain threshold, and both of these processes are involved in BDSM interactions. The fact that the pain experienced during a BDSM experience is voluntary and submissives are in control of the pain experience likely also supports a higher pain threshold. On another note, personality could be partly driving the pain threshold effect, as high extraversion and low neuroticism have been linked to both higher pain thresholds as well as BDSM participation.
Wuyts and her team emphasize that pain threshold is a subjective measurement, which means that it was up to participants to judge their experiences of pain. Submissives may have been biased toward reporting a higher pain tolerance since this may be perceived as admirable in the BDSM community.
Despite this limitation, the researchers maintain the importance of these types of studies. “Research in this specific topic strives to shed some light on something that is widely practiced yet poorly understood,” the study authors write. “This study endeavors to explain how pain may be processed in a different way in the context of a BDSM interaction through biological and psychological processes. By further enhancing our understanding of the mechanisms behind a BDSM interaction in this way, we aspire to relieve the stigma these practitioners still endure.”
The study, “Beyond Pain: A Study on the Variance of Pain Thresholds Within BDSM Interactions in Dominants and Submissives”, was authored by Elise Wuyts, Nele De Neef, Violette Coppens, Alana Schuerwegen, Ilona de Zeeuw-Jans, Maarten Van Der Pol, and Manuel Morrens.