“Big girls don’t cry”: the effect of the experimenter’s sex and pain catastrophising on pain (original) (raw)
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The Journal of Pain, 2001
Empirical research supports the existence of sex differences in pain; yet these differences are poorly understood. Although biological mechanisms have been posited to explain variability, results of pain modeling manipulations suggest social learning may be a stronger influence on pain response. In this report we use the term sex to refer to the biological category of male or female. We use the term gender to refer to the socially acquired aspects of being male or female sometimes referred to as femininity and masculinity. This study investigated a new measure, the Gender Role Expectations of Pain questionnaire (GREP), which was designed to measure sex-related stereotypic attributions of pain sensitivity, endurance, and willingness to report pain. Subjects were 156 male and 235 female undergraduates at a southeastern university. Psychometric investigation of the questionnaire revealed a 5-factor solution that closely mirrored the theoretical construction of the items. Test-retest reliability was also shown for individual items on a separate sample of 28 subjects. Results supported hypotheses about gender role: both men and women rated men as less willing to report pain than women (F 1,389 = 336, P < .001); both men and women rated women more sensitive (F 1,389 = 9.5, P < .05) and less enduring of pain (F 1,389 = 65.7, P < .001) than men; and men rated their own endurance as higher than the typical man (F 1,389 = 65.7, P < .001). Sex accounted for 46% of the variance in willingness to report pain. Results suggest that the GREP distinguished between the socially learned reactions to pain for men and women. It is recommended that the influence of genderrelated expectations for pain be assessed in all studies investigating human sex differences in pain.
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The present study investigated the effects of two attributes of the experimenter (gender and professional status) on the report and tolerance of pain in male and female subjects. 160 non-psychology students (80 male and 80 female, aged 17-59 years) participated in a cold-pressor task. Subjects were assigned to one of 8 groups: male (M) and female (F) experimenters tested male (m) and female (f) students. In each combination (Mm, Mf, Fm, Ff), the cold-pressor task was conducted by either one of two faculty members (high professional) or one of two students (low professional). Subjects were asked to immerse their non-dominant hand as long as possible in cold water (K1 8C). Dependent variables were pain threshold, pain tolerance, and pain intensity. Results indicated a significant main effect for professional status of the experimenter on pain tolerance. Subjects tolerated pain longer when they were tested by a professional experimenter. Further, a significant interaction of experimenter gender and subject gender on pain tolerance indicated that subjects also tolerated pain longer when they were tested by an experimenter of the opposite sex. Additionally, a significant main effect for experimenter gender showed higher pain intensities for subjects tested by female experimenters. The observation that pain responsivity is influenced by the professional status of the experimenter might have implications for the study of pain in general and should be addressed in more detail in future experiments. q
Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 2011
Prior research has found that sex differences in pain are partially due to individual variations in gender roles. In a laboratory study, we tested the hypothesis that the presence of covert gender role cues can also moderate the extent to which women and men experience pain. Specifically, we varied gender role cues by asking male and female participants to write about instances in which they behaved in a stereotypically feminine, masculine, or neutral manner. Pain and cardiovascular reactivity to the cold pressor task were then assessed. Results revealed that, when primed with femininity, men reported less pain and anxiety from the cold pressor task than women. However, no differences existed between the sexes in the masculine or neutral prime conditions. The results indicate that covert gender cues can alter pain reports. Further, at least in some situations, feminine role cues may be more influential on pain reports than masculine role cues.
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Gender role expectations of pain (GREP) was suggested to predict sex differences in pain perception. Our aim was to explore sex differences in GREP and investigate its relationship with heat-pain threshold (HPT) and heat-pain tolerance limit (HPTL). University students (115 males, 134 females) filled the GREP questionnaire. HPT and HPTL were measured in a sample of 72 students. Additionally, GREP values of the present sample were compared with those of the original, American sample to explore possible cultural effects.
Sources of variation in assessing male and female responses to pain
New Ideas in Psychology, 1997
The question of differential pain response between men and women has recently received much attention. In general, women present with pain and ill-health problems at least twice as often as do men and are therefore greater users of the health care system. One common explanation of this disproportionate use is that women respond to stimuli as painful at a lower intensity than do men. Thus, in the same situation, more women are liable to present with pain and illness than are men. Such a suggestion, however, is at odds with the highly variable psychological responses to painful stimuli in both men and women and returns to an essentially Cartesian understanding of pain which draws on the largely discredited 'direct transmission model'. It is suggested here that differential ill-health and pain response between the sexes can be understood through an extension of the biopsychosocial model of pain and ill-health which is used to describe three types of clinical pain disorder: post extraction pain, rheumatoid arthritis and atypical facial pain. The differential experiences of men and women give women both greater opportunity and reason to be ill by altering the factors influencing the biopsychosocial model of pain.
Gender role in pain perception and expression: an integrative review
Brazilian Journal Of Pain, 2020
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Gender seems to play a role in influencing the response to experimental pain, although this influence is not very clear yet. Therefore, the objective of the present review was to investigate the contribution of the gender construct (gender identity/role) in the experience of pain through the selection and analysis of clinical studies on the subject. CONTENTS: A search was carried out in the databases Medline (via Pubmed), LILACS (via BVS), and PsycINFO. The search used the following descriptors: gender identity, pain, gender role combined by the Boolean operator AND/OR (gender identity) AND pain AND gender role AND pain, in English, Portuguese and Spanish. At the end of the selection, 11 studies were included for this review. All the investigations recovered on the subject are clinical laboratory studies. Regarding the influence of the gender identity and its role in pain perception, most of the studies (91%) show that this variable was a contributing factor to the differences observed in perception (tolerance/pain threshold) and the need to communicate the pain. CONCLUSION: In experimental pain, a higher degree of femininity or female social roles are associated with lower thresholds and less tolerance to pain, as well as a greater natural tendency to communicate pain sensation. These results are independent of the type of stimulus, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.
Sex differences in common pain events: Expectations and anchors
The Journal of Pain, 2003
This study examined (1) the effects of sex-related stereotypes in commonly experienced, potentially painful events and (2) differences in events representing the worst pain sensation imaginable for the typical woman and the typical man. Undergraduates (63 women and 54 men) completed the Situational Pain Questionnaire as the typical woman would and as the typical man would. The participants also answered 2 open-ended questions regarding the worst pain sensation imaginable for the typical woman and for the typical man. Our findings demonstrate that sex-related stereotypes extend to common pain events and that men and women expected that men would report less pain for common pain events than women. This suggests a gender-role related learning history that is relatively consistent for both sexes. The worst pain sensation imaginable was perceived to be different for typical men and women. Both sexes chose injury as the class of events men would find most painful and childbirth and menstrual pain as the class of events women would find most painful. Implications of this finding for common pain scaling approaches are discussed. The results of this study were obtained from a fairly uniform group of undergraduate men and women, which may limit the generalizability of our findings.