Parents have long passed this wisdom to their children, but now Australian researchers have confirmed it, it hurts less to take off a Band-Aid quickly than slowly.

The researchers put Band-Aid removal to the test in the latest Medical Journal of Australia and concluded that faster was better.

A study at Queensland's James Cook University used 65 medical students who removed Band-Aids either quickly or slowly, and ranked their pain reaction from zero to 10.

Quick removal returned a pain score of 0.92 in comparison with 1.58 for those who chose the slow approach.

Researcher Dr Carl O'Kane says the research found the cause of pain to be more psychological.

"It's fascinating that if you had a preconception that slow was going to be more painful in fact it was, so it also suggests that pain is not just what you perceive but what you think you will perceive when you get the painful stimulus. So there are a lot of cultural and psychological factors there as well," he added.