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April 21, 2004
Hit me baby one more time

Here's a weird bit of pain research: A scientist claims to have shown that people feel more pain if the person inflicting the pain is a man.

David Williams of the University of Westminster set up an experiment that wouldn't have been out of place in the Spanish Inquisition: He had students put their fingers in a clamp, and then had other students twist it tighter and tighter until the pain was unbearable. The result? The subjects allowed women to twist the clamp much further than men. As Williams told the BBC:

"This effect is likely to be a result of what participants subconsciously expect, based on socially acquired gender stereotypes -- people feel that they are less likely to experience intense pain from a stimulus given by a woman rather than a man."

You can read more about his argument in the university's press release. His results seem very intriguing, though I'm not too sure about his conclusions; whenever scientists start generalizing about how "women are this way and men are that way," I always suspect (maybe unfairly in lots of cases) that they're wheeling their own full set of Samsonite baggage onto the tarmac.


(Thanks to John for this one!)

Posted by Clive Thompson at April 21, 2004 12:57 AM

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Comments

Actually, to me it doesn't seem like these scientists are generalizing about men and women at all; instead, they're exposing the way their *subjects* make generalizations. The torturees should theoretically be in too much pain to keep going, but they can take a little more just because they know they are being hurt by a woman -- in other words, they're so swayed by the irrational stereotype that it alters their perception of their own pain.

Posted by: Emily at April 21, 2004 1:12 AM

Maybe it's not whether the subjects experience more or less pain, maybe it's because they enjoy the pain when it's inflicted by a woman.

Posted by: the kingB at April 21, 2004 6:02 PM

It's also possible that male participants subconciously want to impress women. And perhaps women tend to have been taught to be competitive with other women, but not as much with men.

Posted by: Saleem at April 22, 2004 6:13 PM

The subjects weren't being "trained" into enjoying or anticipating pain -- they got clamped once and that was it.

Anyway, pain is based on the expectation of hurt as well as the signal the nerve is sending to the brain.

If someone else threatened to hold a burning cigarette against your inner wrist and then did so, you'd scream in terror and hurt. If you burned yourself the same way (on a dare, or to win a bet) you would flinch, it would hurt some -- but you would not be in unbearable pain.

And I agree, there was possibly some gender stereotyping among the subjects, who expected the male torturers to be stronger/able to put more torque on a clamp. So they ended up reporting the "unbearable" pain sooner.

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