new research is adding to the growing body of work that indicates women’s experience of pain is viewed with more skepticism than men’s.
the study
, published this month in the
journal of pain
, looked at how average adults (not clinicians) perceive men and women’s expression of pain.
the first phase of the study had participants watch video clips of men and women expressing various levels of shoulder pain. when the researchers controlled for facial expressions and self-reported pain, patients perceived to be female were generally rated to be in less pain than the males.
when participants were asked to predict the level of pain the subjects of the video were in before watching on a scale of 0-100, participants were more likely to overestimate how much pain the men were in, and underestimate how much pain the women were in compared to the self-assessment.
the second phase of the study recruited participants online and asked them to suggest treatment options for the men and women in the pain videos. medication was prescribed for 62 per cent of cases involving men and 58 per cent of cases involving women, while psychotherapy was prescribed for 42 per cent of females versus 38 per cent of males.