Pain and Conditioning: Are We All Pavlov’s Dogs?

Spend enough time around BDSM and you begin to notice how powerful very small things can become. A particular tone of voice, a phrase, a collar being fastened, a hand across your back at exactly the right moment. Within an established dynamic, things that would mean absolutely nothing to anybody else can carry years of history.

Some of that is trust, anticipation and simply knowing another person extremely well. But some of it may also be conditioning.

Most of us know the simplified story of Pavlov's dogs: repeatedly pair something insignificant with something meaningful and eventually the first thing begins producing a response of its own. Humans obviously make rather more complicated test subjects, but our brains are constantly learning associations. A smell makes us hungry, a song produces an emotion or a particular place makes us tense before anything has actually happened.

We also learn through reward. If doing something repeatedly leads to praise, pleasure, achievement or relief, it becomes more likely that we will want to do it again. Psychology gives these processes different names — classical and operant conditioning — but in real life they overlap with expectation, memory, choice and emotion.

Conditioning could potentially play a part in countless kinks. A position, word, item of clothing or ritual can acquire significance through repetition. But the part that interests me is my own kink: I am a masochist, so for me the interesting question is pain.

What I can take now is dramatically different from what I could take years ago. Some of that is undoubtedly experience. I know myself better, I understand my reactions and I have spent years exploring consensual pain within a trusted dynamic. But I also wonder how much my response has been shaped by repeatedly experiencing pain alongside trust, encouragement, achievement, praise and reward.

Pain is particularly interesting because it isn't simply an objective measurement of physical stimulus. The nervous system interprets what is happening using context, expectation, emotion and previous experience. Researchers have demonstrated that learned cues can contribute to both reduced and increased pain responses, and placebo research shows that expectation can alter the experience of pain.

A 2026 analysis combined brain-imaging data from 16 studies involving 409 people. Both verbal suggestion and previous conditioning influenced pain, and combining the two produced stronger pain relief than verbal suggestion alone.

Put rather less scientifically: being told “this will help” can matter. Having repeatedly experienced that it helps may matter even more.

That immediately makes me think of Madam.

After years within our dynamic, she can sometimes coach considerably more from me than I would achieve alone. It may be nothing more than “You can do this,” a hand across my back, or the considerably less comforting “You will take another ten for Madam. They will not be nice.”

It still blooming hurts. That is rather the point.

But my response to it can change.

Part of that is completely conscious. I trust Madam, I want to please her and she knows me extraordinarily well. She can usually tell the difference between me struggling with something and me genuinely reaching my limit. But her voice, certain words and particular touches have also accompanied pain, endurance, success, praise and reward again and again over many years.

It would almost be stranger if my brain had learnt nothing from that.

There is science supporting the importance of the person beside us too. A 2023 experiment involving 37 couples found that supportive speech and supportive touch from a partner reduced experimentally induced pain more effectively than simply having that person present. It wasn't BDSM research, but the relevance to a trusted S&M dynamic is difficult to miss.

There is also some direct BDSM research. A 2021 study found higher pain thresholds among BDSM practitioners than controls, while submissive participants showed a temporary increase in pain threshold following a BDSM interaction. Earlier research into people regularly engaging in masochistic behaviour also found that context strongly affected their attitudes and emotional responses to pain.

That distinction matters. Saying a masochist simply likes pain misses most of what is happening. Accidentally smashing my hand into a doorframe and deliberately experiencing pain from Madam within our consensual dynamic are not psychologically equivalent experiences. Both hurt. Only one has meaning, anticipation, trust and reward attached to it.

Reward may be just as important as the pain itself. Praise can be rewarding. Achievement can be rewarding. Pleasing a Dominant can be extraordinarily rewarding. Over time, the submissive learns the Dominant's cues and expectations while the Dominant learns the submissive's reactions, tells and limits. Both people are learning the other.

Perhaps that is why established dynamics can develop such subtle communication. A word, look or touch which appears completely insignificant from outside can carry an enormous amount of information within the dynamic.

None of this means people can simply be programmed. Humans have beliefs, desires, previous experiences and the inconvenient ability to think about what is happening. Conditioning can weaken and change, and consent remains consent regardless of how established a response becomes.

In fact, I think recognising the possible influence makes trust more important.

There is a subtle difference between “Madam knows how to help me go further” and “Madam knows how to make me go further.” What makes the first beautiful is knowing that the same person who can encourage me towards an edge also knows when that edge really has been reached.

Perhaps that is one of the fascinating things about a long-established BDSM dynamic. We don't simply learn techniques. We learn each other.

So perhaps my original joke about Pavlov isn't quite as ridiculous as it sounds.

Four completely ordinary words — “You can do this” — may mean nothing to somebody else. To me, spoken by one particular person, they carry years of pain, trust, challenge, reassurance, achievement and reward.

Is that conditioning? Reinforcement? Expectation? Trust? The dynamic itself?

Probably a messy mixture of all of them.

Perhaps we're all Pavlov's dogs to some degree.

The interesting question isn't whether somebody has a bell. It's what we've learnt the bell means.

Research referenced: Atlas, L.Y. (2023), How Instructions, Learning, and Expectations Shape Pain and Neurobiological Responses; Spisak, T. et al. (2026), Meta-analytic evidence for distinct neural correlates of conditioned versus verbally induced placebo analgesia; Mazza, A. et al. (2023), Pain perception and physiological responses are modulated by active support from a romantic partner; Wuyts, E. et al. (2021), Beyond Pain: A Study on the Variance of Pain Thresholds Within BDSM Interactions in Dominants and Submissives; Defrin, R. et al. (2015), Attitudes and emotions towards pain and sensitivity to painful stimuli among people routinely engaging in masochistic behaviour.