The Impact of Gender Role Expectations on Pain Experience: An Experimental Study

Date

2024-9-6

Author

Güvenç, İrem Berna
Bozo, Özlem

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Research suggested that women are at a greater risk of experiencing clinical and experimentally induced pain. The difference has been attributed to some biological and psychological factors. Of the psychological explanations, the impact of gender-role stereotypes have been under debate. Traditionally, women are expected to be fragile, weak, and helpless, while men are expected to be brave, bold, and strong. Research examining the impact of gender-roles in pain experience have shown that both men and women put an effort to adapt to gender-roles in experimentally induced pain. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether gender-role expectations would affect the pain reports of the participants in a cold-pressure task. There were three groups in the experiment: the first group was informed only about the procedure, the second group was given a gender-role congruent expectation of pain, and the third group was prompted with a gender-role incongruent expectation before performing the task. By controlling the impacts of state anxiety and self-efficacy, MANCOVA analysis (Nwomen=76, Nmen=78) showed that when gender-role congruent expectations were given, men’s pain threshold was significantly greater than women (Mdif=12.49, SE=4.07, p<.05). Moreover, pain intensity reported by women in the gender-role congruent group was significantly higher than men’s in the gender-role incongruent group (Mdif=1.49, SE=.47, p<.05). Our findings revealed that gender-role expectations in the experimental setting affected pain reporting; hence, they may also play a role in pain reporting in clinical settings, which has significant implications for both genders to benefit from healthcare services.

Subject Keywords

Gender disparities in pain experience

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/111354

Collections

Department of Psychology, Conference / Seminar