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Dopamine has been suggested to have direct antinociceptive effects. However, effects on the motivation to endure or to avoid nociceptive stimulation would be more in line with dopamine's well‐established role in the motivation to obtain reward. Thus, dopamine might either inhibit or facilitate the perception of nociceptive stimuli to bias an organism towards endurance or avoidance depending on the relative importance of the nociceptive input. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two psychophysical experiments in human volunteers. In Experiment 1, the respective antinociceptive and pro‐nociceptive effects of monetary wins and losses were assessed by administering thermal stimuli (three intensities, within‐subject factor) while participants simultaneously won, lost, or neither won nor lost (neutral condition) money (within‐subject factor) in a wheel‐of‐fortune task. In Experiment 2, we tested the effect of low‐dose …