ArticleBMC oral health2025
A machine learning approach to investigate the role of fear of pain, personal experience, and vicarious learning in dental anxiety.
Article in BMC oral health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Estimating the reliability of the modified dental anxiety scale: A systematic review and reliability generalization meta-analysis.Journal of health psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Primacy vs. recency effects: the dominant role of recent over past dental experience in dental anxiety.BMC oral health · 2026Article
- What psychometric scales did researchers use to measure dental fear, anxiety, or phobia? A literature survey from 2020 to 2024.Frontiers in oral health · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDental anxiety is a pervasive problem worldwide, leading to avoidance of dental care, resulting in oral health problems and impacting daily life through social withdrawal and work absenteeism. Addressing this fear is an important public health concern. This study aimed to identify factors that are negatively (e.g., regular dental visits) and positively (e.g., receiving injections, social transmission of fear, anxiety) associated with dental anxiety.
methodsWe examined the relationship between dental anxiety and state anxiety, fear of pain associated with injections and other bodily harm, personal experience, and social transmission of fear using a machine learning approach. Participants (N = 802, 625 women, M age = 28.74, SD = 9.15) completed an online survey.
resultsResults showed that higher regularity of dental visits was negatively associated (coefficient range: - 0.055 to - 0.097) with dental anxiety. Conversely, we found positive associations between higher levels of anxiety (coefficient range: 0.130 to 0.168), subjectively more painful and distressing last dental visit (coefficient range: 0.322 to 0.343), social transmission of fear (hearing a scary story from friends [coefficient range: 0.024 to 0.128] or the media [coefficient range: 0.024 to 0.027]), and higher fear of pain associated with injections (coefficient range: 0.020 to 0.260) and dental anxiety.
conclusionsThese findings highlight the important role of fear of pain associated with injections in dental anxiety, and support that prior benign exposures are protective, while negative experiences increase the risk of developing dental anxiety. Our findings are also consistent with social transmission theories.
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