Women don't seem to want to appear defenseless to men, as some expect them to. So say the authors of a new pain study published by Australian scientists in the Scandinavian Journal of Pain.
Stereotypical Stoicism
How we feel pain and react to it depends not only on physiology, but also on socio-psychological circumstances. The authors of the new study point out that in Western society there is a stereotype that a man should endure pain stoically. It should be especially persistent in the presence of women. Some studies support this expectation, in which men were able to endure pain longer when it was caused by women.
Following the same stereotype of standard gender roles, a woman can be expected to respond more expressively to pain in the presence of a man in order to appear more defenseless and attract attention. However, at least one study showed the opposite: women were better at tolerating pain when the experimenter was a man.
Scientific evidence on how gender affects the perception of pain remains controversial. Some studies have not found any connection between the sensation of pain and the gender of the people who caused and felt it.
Pain as a catastrophe
Gender differences in the perception of pain may explain a specific psychological aspect — the catastrophization of pain. This is what they call an exaggerated negative assessment of pain, attributing excessive intensity to it. It has previously been shown that women tend to catastrophize pain more than men. However, it was not previously known how the sex of the experimenter affects this.
Women prefer to be patient
Scientists from Murdoch University in Western Australia decided to clarify whether gender stereotypes are true. They wanted to avoid the shortcomings that plagued much of the previous research. To do this, they expanded the arsenal of tools for inflicting pain and diversified its intensity.
The study involved 30 men and 30 women. They had to rate pain on a special scale when they were experimented on with temperatures, pressures, pin pricks, and high-frequency electrical stimulation.
As in previous studies, women catastrophized pain more than men. But male experimenters, women reported less intense pain than female experimenters, on the same tests.
Scientists suggest that women increasingly do not want to seem like the weaker sex, go against the prevailing stereotypes. Because of this, catastrophizing pain may have less of an impact on pain perception.
The authors point out that when physicians evaluate pain in men and women, they often make mistakes due to gender stereotypes. Pain research such as this is being done to better understand how women report chronic pain for various conditions.