Previous studies have already shown that men and women experience pain differently. But that does not explain why the ailments of little girls would be less considered than those of little boys, according to a study by Yale University (United States) published in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology early January. Adults tend to minimize pain in girls. According to the researchers, this difference in regard is due to ingrained beliefs, not scientifically proven, such as “Men are more stoic” and “More emotional women”.
To reach these conclusions, Yale scientists formed two groups of American adults at random. All the participants watched the same video of a 5-year-old child receiving a finger prick during a medical visit in kindergarten. They were then asked to rate the pain the toddler was feeling. But while for one of the groups the child was named “Samuel”, the other knew him under the name of “Samantha”.
Gender stereotypes
It turned out that the adults who thought it was a little boy tended to rate the child’s pain “more” than the group who thought they were looking at a girl. However, the behavior was the same, since they were viewing the same images. These results thus support previous studies carried out on “Gender stereotypes and the biased clinical assessment of pain”. But this is only the second of its kind to focus more specifically on these differences in consideration among children.
“If the phenomena observed in our studies were to generalize to other contexts, this would have important implications for diagnosis and treatment. Any bias in judgments about pain would be extremely important as they could exacerbate an inequitable health care supply ”, conclude the researchers in a press release.
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