eng research paper V#2

Yousef Aamir Professor Degenaro Eng 1020 November 20, 2018 Gender and Pain Tolerance When people compare pain tolerance of men to women, they usually believe that men can tolerate more physical pain than women. In today’s society, men are typically seen as the stronger gender and are expected to show that in everyday life. Men are made to believe that they shouldn’t express pain, or they would be viewed as being weak. Men are usually discouraged from expressing pain and are often told to “man up” if they were to express pain. Women, on the other hand, do not have significant social pressure to suppress their expression of pain. This suggests that there is a social expectation that is involved in pain tolerance and gender might have a lot less to deal with pain tolerance than people may believe. This leads me to believe that men and women perceive pain the same way, but social expectations of men lead them to express pain a lot less than women typical do. In an article written by Ruth Defrin, she starts to explore the idea of gender roles and pain tolerance. Defrin performed an experiment to test whether or not gender role has anything to do with pain tolerance. Defrin’s participants consisted of 33 men and 39 women, for a total of 72 participants. Defrin goes on to perform a heat sensitivity test on the participants and in her findings, she says, “females were found to have greater pain reports than males only in high level of stimulation but not around pain threshold” and then she follows with “The study showed that despite sex differences…males and females had similar heat-pain threshold” (Defrin pg 4). Defrin states that both men and women start feeling pain at the same stimuli intensity but in higher levels of stimulation women tend to report pain more often. This seems to contradict my claim, but in actuality it shows how men are less willing to report pain even though their sensitivity to pain isn’t much different from women. Defrin follows by saying, “Males perceived themselves as less sensitive to pain, and less willing to report pain than women is in accordance with the classical male gender role belief” (Defrin pg 4). Defrin suggests that men believe they were less sensitive to pain than women, causing them to be less willing to report pain which creates the illusion that they are more tolerant than women. This shows that men expect themselves to be able to handle more than women, so in turn they tolerate the pain longer to try and satisfy that expectation. Michael E. Robinson’s own experiment also lead to the same conclusion. Michael E. Robinson’s experiment also suggests that gender and pain tolerance don’t have a significant correlation. The purpose of his study was to examine the contribution of gender-role stereotypes to sex differences in pain. Robinson performed a pain tolerance test across both genders. Robinsons procedure required the participant to put their hand in freezing water and try to hold their hand in the water as long as they possibly could. In his report, Robinson states, “Results indicated a significant sex difference in the no expectation condition with men having longer tolerance times” (Robinson pg 3). Surprisingly, Robinson found that when there wasn’t an expectation on how long the participant was to hold their hand in the water, men held their hand in the water a lot longer than women did. However, his results changed significantly when an expectation was set. Robinson follows with, “Results of the 30-second gender expectation condition and the 90-second gender expectation condition were nonsignificant” (Robinson pg 3). Similarly to Ruth’s experiment, Robinson found that when an expectation was present, men and women had nearly the same pain tolerance. Robinson’s findings suggest that when the same expectations were present for both men and women, they produced nearly identical results. Kim Pulver performed a similar experiment that yielded very similar results. In Pulver’s experiment, she suggested that if social norm messages were said to participants before they performed a pain tolerance test, they would perform better on the test. Pulver’s sample consisted of 80 men and 180 women. The participants were selected at random from Southwestern University. In her procedure, Pulver instructs her participants to put their non-dominant hand in a bucket of water at 0 degrees Celsius. She then told her experimental group that most people can hold their hand in the bucket for 90 seconds. She says this to place an expectation on her experimental group. In her findings, Pulver states “the present study suggests that when held to higher standards (e.g., an inflated pain tolerance time), individuals modify their behavior to resemble those standards” (Pulver pg.5). Similarly to Robinson’s findings, Pulver’s results indicate that when an expectation is placed on a participant they tend to have a higher pain tolerance than participants that did not have an expectation placed on them. Her findings are consistent with Robinson’s findings and suggest that social factors influence pain tolerance. An experiment performed by Gregory Pool takes a different route on testing pain threshold and tolerance between the genders, but his findings are consistent with the rest of the experimenter’s findings. Gregory J. Pool suggests that gender-specific norms exist for pain tolerance behaviors. Pool’s sample group consisted of 174 people (64 men and 110 women). The participants were selected based on their gender identification which was determined by a questionnaire. In his procedure, Pool used electrical pulses to determine his participant's pain tolerance. The pulses would increase by .10 mA after every pulse, beginning at 0 mA, until the participant decides they cannot continue or until the upper limit of 5-mA was reached. In Pool’s findings, he states “High-identifying males tolerated significantly more pain than high-identifying females” (Pool pg 5). Pool found that men who viewed themselves as very masculine tolerated a lot more pain than women who viewed themselves as very feminine. However, Pool follows by saying, “As expected, no differences were found between low-identifying males and females” (Pool pg 5). Pool found that men and women that did not have high gender identification, had very similar pain tolerance. His results are very consistent with Ruth’s and Robinson’s findings by showing that when social factors were at a minimum than both men and women showed very similar pain tolerance. Gregory’s findings suggest that gender identification plays a major role in pain tolerance and biologic factors have very little effect on pain tolerance. Similarly, an experiment performed by John Garofalo also suggests that biological factors play a very minimal role in pain tolerance. In Garofalo’s experiment he suggests that pain tolerance changes as the mood of a person changes and that biological factors play a minimal role. Garofalo’s experiment consisted of 66 participants. 22 of the participants were male and 44 participants were female. In his experiment, Garofalo would expose his participants to cold and hot stimuli repeatedly to see when they would fatigue. Before he conducted the pain tolerance test, Garofalo measured the participants mood via questionnaire. In Garofalo’s findings, he states “analyses revealed that the strength of the associations between men and women for pain tolerance and POMS responses did not significantly differ” (Garofalo para. 21). Garofalo found that gender played a very minimal role in pain tolerance of an individual. However, Garofalo follows by saying “men are more likely to indicate having been actively discouraged from making such reports of pain during childhood. In support of this, men have been found to report lower pain ratings and greater feelings of embarrassment regarding pain complaints compared to women” (Garofalo para. 25). Garofalo suggests that men report lower pain ratings because they were discouraged from doing so in early childhood. This supports Pool’s findings on how gender identity plays a role in pain tolerance because the more masculine a man believes he is the more likely he is to follow social expectations placed on men. A study performed by Danielle S. Berke, builds on to Garofalo’s work by testing to see if stereotypes on men are what cause them to act the way they do when it comes to pain tolerance. In Berke’s experiment, Berke attempted to prove that if men’s masculinity was threatened then they would tolerate more pain to prove they are masculine. Berke’s experiment consisted of 246 men. In his procedure, Berke either gave threatening feedback or congruent feedback. After doing so he would perform the pain tolerance test which was done with a rod that put pressure on the supinator muscle on the participants’ nondominant upper arm. In his results, Berke says “we found that gender-threatened men endured significantly more pain than their nonthreatened counterparts” (Berke pg.5). Berke states that men whose masculinity was threatened, tolerated more pain. Berke then follows with “masculine status should activate gender stereotyped cognitive-affective networks in the service of reasserting masculine status… masculine threat should prime arousing, action-oriented feelings that “prepare” men to endure greater levels of pain” (Berke pg. 5). Berke says that when a man’s masculinity is threatened it induces feelings that make the man prepare to endure more pain to prove himself. This correlates with Garofalo’s findings on how social factors have made men believe they should have to prove themselves as being manly and not show weakness. An article written by Penn State University also suggests that men tolerate more pain to show masculinity. In the Penn State University article written by Alexa Stevenson, it talks about how social expectations determine whether or not men report pain. The article starts off talking about stereotypes on how men are believed to be tougher and are expected to handle more pain. Stevenson then moves on to interview Jennifer Graham, a professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State. Graham states “Boys typically learn that they are expected to be tough and not complain about pain” (Stevenson pg.1). Graham explains that social pressure to be “manly” is put on boys at a young age and in turn, makes them tolerate pain to satisfy social expectations. Graham follows by referencing a different study in which she states, “One study, conducted by researchers at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, found that men reported less pain in the presence of a female experimenter than they did in the presence of a male” (Stevenson pg.1). Graham references an experiment in which men tolerated pain longer when a female experimenter was present because they felt they needed to not show weakness in front of a woman. This interview suggests that men tolerate pain because of social expectations which is similar to Berke’s findings. To conclude, multiple experiments have suggested that pain tolerance is not directly correlated to the gender of an individual. All of the experiments I have mentioned have came to the conclusion that social factors play a major role in whether or not people where willing to report pain and whether or not they tolerated more pain. The social pressure on men to act tough and “manly” has caused men to suppress pain expression and tolerate more pain in order to satisfy those social expectations. Men have been taught to act masculine and have learned to be very conscious of how people perceive their masculinity. Social expectations have shaped the way men react to pain which provides the illusion that men perceive pain differently when in actuality they perceive pain the same way women do. Work Cited Defrin, Ruth. “Gender Role Expectations of Pain Is Associated with Pain Tolerance Limit but Not with Pain Threshold.” Pain, vol. 145, no. 1, 2009, pp. 230–236. Robinson, Michael E. “Altering Gender Role Expectations: Effects on Pain Tolerance, Pain Threshold, and Pain Ratings.” The Journal of Pain, vol. 4, no. 5, 2003, pp. 284–288. Berke, Danielle S., “Take It like a Man: Gender-Threatened Men’s Experience of Gender Role Discrepancy, Emotion Activation, and Pain Tolerance.” Psychology of Men & Masculinity, vol. 18, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 62–69. Pool, Gregory J. "Role of Gender Norms and Group Identification on Hypothetical and Experimental Pain Tolerance." Pain, vol. 129, no. 1, 2007, pp. 122-129. Garofalo, John P. "The Role of Mood States Underlying Sex Differences in the Perception and Tolerance of Pain." Pain Practice, vol. 6, no. 3, 2006, pp. 186-196. Pulvers, Kim, “Computer-Delivered Social Norm Message Increases Pain Tolerance.” Annals of Behavioral Medicine, vol. 47, no. 3, 2013, pp. 316–324 Stevenson, Alexa. “Probing Question: Do Women Have a Higher Pain Threshold than Men?” Penn State University, 10 Nov. 2008, news.psu.edu/story/141291/2008/11/10/research/probing-question-do-women-have-higher-pain-threshold-men.