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American Pain Society
4700 W Lake Ave
Glenview, IL 60025
| For immediate release April 15, 2011 |
Contact: Chuck Weber (847) 705-1802 |
GLENVIEW, Ill., April 15, 2011 -- In evaluating pain, clinical and non-clinical observers often make subjective inferences about pain intensity and genuineness and, according to findings of Canadian study published in The Journal of Pain, their judgments are mainly influenced by patient facial expressions and gender biases regarding pain intensity.
Researchers from McGill University in Montreal selected 90 subjects to view videos of patients with chronic pain performing a physically challenging task. The investigators sought to identify the processes involved in how observers assess pain intensity and pain genuineness. Previous studies have examined how observers infer that someone is in pain, and have shown that judgmental heuristics (automatic beliefs, biases or rules of thumb) about gender differences in pain sensitivity govern pain judgments. However, there has been little research exploring how observers assess pain intensity or genuineness.
The study participants viewed video recordings of 12 men and 8 women with persistent back pain who agreed to be videotaped while performing a difficult lifting task. The observers were first asked to infer the level of pain experienced by the patients, and were then asked to infer the degree of faking they observed. The findings showed that observers rely on judgmental heuristics when assessing pain intensity but rely more on facial expression when determining whether the individual is faking a pain response. In the study, observers inferred greater levels of pain intensity in women than in men, suggesting that they believe women are more sensitive to pain than men.
Observer reliance on facial pain expressions increased when suspicions occurred about the genuineness of an individual’s pain. The researchers noted that when faking was suspected, observers relied on more objective, thoughtful and systematic ways of evaluation, and sought distinct behavioral clues from facial expressions.
However, a sex heuristic was found in determining pain genuineness as shown by observers inferring significantly greater levels of faking in men than in women.
he study provides new insights into evaluative processes governing observer inferences about pain intensity and pain genuineness. It is the first published research showing that observers rely on a sex heuristic when making inferences about pain intensity and pain genuineness.
Based in Glenview, Ill., the American Pain Society (APS) is a multidisciplinary community that brings together a diverse group of scientists, clinicians and other professionals to increase the knowledge of pain and transform public policy and clinical practice to reduce pain-related suffering. APS was founded in 1978 with 510 charter members. From the outset, the group was conceived as a multidisciplinary organization. APS has enjoyed solid growth since its early days and today has approximately 3,200 members. The Board of Directors includes physicians, nurses, psychologists, basic scientists, pharmacists, policy analysts and more.
