Research finds that poor people are perceived as being less susceptible to pain

[GenesisNemesis]

https://www.psypost.org/2021/09/new-psyc...pain-61883

A new study provides evidence that lower-class individuals are stereotyped as insensitive to physical pain, which could impact their medical care and treatment recommendations. The findings have been published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

“National health statistics indicate that wealthy people receive more substantial pain treatment than poor people. In this work, we aimed to better understand how stereotypes might contribute to such socioeconomic (SES) based disparities in healthcare,” said study author Kevin Summers, a graduate student at the University of Denver and member of the Lloyd Social Detection Lab.

“Much of the previous work seeking to better understand factors that may underlie these pain disparities had focused on structural-level (e.g., lack of access to quality care or insurance) and patient-level (e.g., adherence to treatment regimens, exercise, smoking and alcohol use) factors. Yet, little work had focused on potential perceiver-level biases (e.g., providers’ stereotypes or biases) that might aid in explaining treatment disparities.”

“Our research team has expertise in understanding how perceiver-level biases may influence real-world disparities, and thus we took this lens to better understand the relative undertreatment of low-SES individuals’ pain,” Summers explained.

Across 10 experiments, with 1,584 participants in total, the researchers consistently found that poor people were perceived as experiencing less pain.

The researchers found that individuals with low-paying jobs (such as being a dishwasher) were viewed as being less sensitive to pain than individuals with high-paying jobs (such as being a doctor.) In addition, an imagined individual who was explicitly described as being low in socioeconomic status was perceived as being less sensitive to pain compared to an imagined individual who was high in socioeconomic status.

“We found that our pain sensitivity effects generalized across judgments of both White and Black individuals and men and women,” Summers said.

The researchers also found a potential mechanism underlying these biased perceptions of pain sensitivity. Poor individuals were assumed to have experienced more hardships in life compared to their wealthy counterparts, which in turn was associated with reduced perceptions of pain sensitivity. In other words, people appear to believe that hardship “toughens up” individuals who are low in socioeconomic status.

Thought this was an interesting study. And man, that's really fucked up.

[Dancefortwo]

This doesn't suprise me at all.  The other perception people have is that poor people are used to tragedy; death of a child, shootings and such, so they get over it faster because it's a simple reality of their lives.  I read this years ago in regards to Black mothers who have seen their sons and daughters shot in the streets.  

Meh, they're used to all the violence so it's no big deal.     /s

[Dom]

https://www.psypost.org/2021/09/new-psyc...pain-61883

A new study provides evidence that lower-class individuals are stereotyped as insensitive to physical pain, which could impact their medical care and treatment recommendations. The findings have been published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

“National health statistics indicate that wealthy people receive more substantial pain treatment than poor people. In this work, we aimed to better understand how stereotypes might contribute to such socioeconomic (SES) based disparities in healthcare,” said study author Kevin Summers, a graduate student at the University of Denver and member of the Lloyd Social Detection Lab.

“Much of the previous work seeking to better understand factors that may underlie these pain disparities had focused on structural-level (e.g., lack of access to quality care or insurance) and patient-level (e.g., adherence to treatment regimens, exercise, smoking and alcohol use) factors. Yet, little work had focused on potential perceiver-level biases (e.g., providers’ stereotypes or biases) that might aid in explaining treatment disparities.”

“Our research team has expertise in understanding how perceiver-level biases may influence real-world disparities, and thus we took this lens to better understand the relative undertreatment of low-SES individuals’ pain,” Summers explained.

Across 10 experiments, with 1,584 participants in total, the researchers consistently found that poor people were perceived as experiencing less pain.

The researchers found that individuals with low-paying jobs (such as being a dishwasher) were viewed as being less sensitive to pain than individuals with high-paying jobs (such as being a doctor.) In addition, an imagined individual who was explicitly described as being low in socioeconomic status was perceived as being less sensitive to pain compared to an imagined individual who was high in socioeconomic status.

“We found that our pain sensitivity effects generalized across judgments of both White and Black individuals and men and women,” Summers said.

The researchers also found a potential mechanism underlying these biased perceptions of pain sensitivity. Poor individuals were assumed to have experienced more hardships in life compared to their wealthy counterparts, which in turn was associated with reduced perceptions of pain sensitivity. In other words, people appear to believe that hardship “toughens up” individuals who are low in socioeconomic status.

Thought this was an interesting study. And  man, that's really fucked up.

I think pain is downplayed whenever it afflicts "the other", including animals. One's own pain is always traumatic, but that of others not so much. I had never noticed this applying to socio-economic status, but apparently so. Not the only case of it though, by far.