Title: Poor Toddlers Feel Less Pain? Application of Class-Based Pain Stereotypes in Judgments of Children
Across four studies, we investigated whether perceptions of children’s pain are influenced by their socioeconomic status (SES). We found evidence that children with low SES were believed to feel less pain than children with high SES (Study 1), and this effect was not moderated by child’s age (Study 2). Next, we examined life hardship as a mediator of this effect among children, finding that children with low SES were rated as having lived a harder life and thus as feeling less pain (Study 3). Finally, we examined downstream consequences for hypothetical treatment recommendations. We found that participants perceived children with low SES as less sensitive to pain and therefore as requiring less pain treatment than children with high SES (Study 4). Thus, we consistently observe that stereotypes of low-SES individuals as insensitive to pain may manifest in judgments of children and their recommended pain care. Implications of this work for theory and medical practice are discussed.
Wealth‐based disparities in health care wherein the poor receive undertreatment in painful conditions are a prominent issue that requires immediate attention. Research with adults suggests that these disparities are partly rooted in stereotypes associating poor individuals with pain insensitivity. However, whether and how children consider a sufferer's wealth status in their pain perceptions remains unknown. The present work addressed this question by testing 4‐ to 9‐year‐olds from the US and China. In Study 1 (N = 108, 56 girls, 79% White), US participants saw rich and poor White children experiencing identical injuries and indicated who they thought felt more pain. Although 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds responded at chance, children aged seven and above attributed more pain to the poor than to the rich. Study 2 with a new sample of US children (N = 111, 56 girls, 69% White) extended this effect to judgments of White adults’ pain. Pain judgments also informed children's prosocial behaviors, leading them to provide medical resources to the poor. Studies 3 (N = 118, 59 girls, 100% Asian) and 4 (N = 80, 40 girls, 100% Asian) found that, when evaluating White and Asian people's suffering, Chinese children began to attribute more pain to the poor than to the rich earlier than US children. Thus, unlike US adults, US children and Chinese children recognize the poor's pain from early on. These findings add to our knowledge of group‐based beliefs about pain sensitivity and have broad implications on ways to promote equitable health care.
Research Highlights
Four studies examined whether 4‐ to 9‐year‐old children's pain perceptions were influenced by sufferers’ wealth status.
US children attributed more pain to White individuals of low wealth status than those of high wealth status by age seven.
Chinese children demonstrated an earlier tendency to attribute more pain to the poor (versus the rich) compared to US children.
Children's wealth‐based pain judgments underlied their tendency to provide healthcare resources to people of low wealth status.
Dore, Rebecca A.; Hoffman, Kelly M.; Lillard, Angeline S.; Trawalter, Sophie(
, European Journal of Social Psychology)
Abstract
White American adults assume that Blacks feel less pain than do Whites, but only if they believe that Blacks have faced greater economic hardship than Whites. The current study investigates when in development children first recognize racial group differences in economic hardship and examines whether perceptions of hardship inform children's racial bias in pain perception. Five‐ to 10‐year‐olds (N = 178) guessed which of two items (low versus high value) belonged to a Black and a White child and rated the amount of pain a Black and a White child would feel in 10 painful situations. By age 5, White American children attributed lower‐value possessions to Blacks than Whites, indicating a recognition of racial group differences in economic hardship. The results also replicated the emergence of a racial bias in pain perception between 5 and 10. However, unlike adults', children's perceptions of hardship do not account for racial bias in pain perception.
Socioeconomic status (SES) has been shown to influence language skills, with children of lower SES backgrounds performing worse on language assessments compared to their higher SES peers. While there is abundant behavioral research on the effects of SES, whether there are differences in the neural mechanisms used to support language skill is less established. In this study, we examined the relation between maternal education (ME), a component of SES, and neural mechanisms of language. We focused on Kindergarten children, at the beginning of formal reading education, and on a pre‐reading skill, phonological awareness—the ability to distinguish or manipulate the sounds of language. We determined ME‐related differences in neural activity by examining a skill‐matched sample of typically achieving 5‐year‐old children as they performed a rhyme judgment task. We examined brain lateralization in two language processing regions, the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG). In the IFG, lateralization was related to ME but not skill: children with low ME showed bilateral activation compared to children with higher ME who showed leftward lateralization. In the STG, there was a skill by ME interaction on lateralization, such that children with high ME showed a positive relation between rightward lateralization and skill and children with low ME showed a positive relation between leftward lateralization and skill. Thus, we demonstrated ME is related to differences in neural recruitment during language processing, yet this difference in recruitment is not indicative of a deficit in linguistic processing in Kindergarten children.
Davoudi, Anis; Ozrazgat-Baslanti, Tezcan; Tighe, Patrick J.; Bihorac, Azra; Rashidi, Parisa(
, 2020 42nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC))
null
(Ed.)
Critical care patients experience varying levels of pain during their stay in the intensive care unit, often requiring administration of analgesics and sedation. Such medications generally exacerbate the already sedentary physical activity profiles of critical care patients, contributing to delayed recovery. Thus, it is important not only to minimize pain levels, but also to optimize analgesic strategies in order to maximize mobility and activity of ICU patients. Currently, we lack an understanding of the relation between pain and physical activity on a granular level. In this study, we examined the relationship between nurse assessed pain scores and physical activity as measured using a wearable accelerometer device. We found that average, standard deviation, and maximum physical activity counts are significantly higher before high pain reports compared to before low pain reports during both daytime and nighttime, while percentage of time spent immobile was not significantly different between the two pain report groups. Clusters detected among patients using extracted physical activity features were significant in adjusted logistic regression analysis for prediction of pain report group.
Summers, Kevin M., Paganini, Gina A., and Lloyd, E. Paige. Poor Toddlers Feel Less Pain? Application of Class-Based Pain Stereotypes in Judgments of Children. Social Psychological and Personality Science 14.2 Web. doi:10.1177/19485506221094087.
Summers, Kevin M., Paganini, Gina A., & Lloyd, E. Paige. Poor Toddlers Feel Less Pain? Application of Class-Based Pain Stereotypes in Judgments of Children. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 14 (2). https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221094087
Summers, Kevin M., Paganini, Gina A., and Lloyd, E. Paige.
"Poor Toddlers Feel Less Pain? Application of Class-Based Pain Stereotypes in Judgments of Children". Social Psychological and Personality Science 14 (2). Country unknown/Code not available: SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221094087.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10366793.
@article{osti_10366793,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Poor Toddlers Feel Less Pain? Application of Class-Based Pain Stereotypes in Judgments of Children},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10366793},
DOI = {10.1177/19485506221094087},
abstractNote = {Across four studies, we investigated whether perceptions of children’s pain are influenced by their socioeconomic status (SES). We found evidence that children with low SES were believed to feel less pain than children with high SES (Study 1), and this effect was not moderated by child’s age (Study 2). Next, we examined life hardship as a mediator of this effect among children, finding that children with low SES were rated as having lived a harder life and thus as feeling less pain (Study 3). Finally, we examined downstream consequences for hypothetical treatment recommendations. We found that participants perceived children with low SES as less sensitive to pain and therefore as requiring less pain treatment than children with high SES (Study 4). Thus, we consistently observe that stereotypes of low-SES individuals as insensitive to pain may manifest in judgments of children and their recommended pain care. Implications of this work for theory and medical practice are discussed.},
journal = {Social Psychological and Personality Science},
volume = {14},
number = {2},
publisher = {SAGE Publications},
author = {Summers, Kevin M. and Paganini, Gina A. and Lloyd, E. Paige},
}
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