Sexism-Related Stigma Affects Pain Perception

Abstract

People with stigmatized characteristics tend to be devalued by others in a given society. The negative experiences related to stigma cause individuals to struggle as they would if they were in physical pain and bring various negative outcomes in the way that physical pain does. However, it is unclear whether stigma related to one's identity would affect their perception of physical pain. To address this issue, using sexism-related paradigms, we found that females had reduced pain threshold/tolerance in the Cold Pressor Test (Experiment 1) and an increased rating for nociceptive laser stimuli with fixed intensity (Experiment 2). Additionally, we observed that there was a larger laser-evoked N1, an early laser-evoked P2, and a larger magnitude of low-frequency component in laser-evoked potentials (LEPs) in the stigma condition than in the control condition (Experiment 3). Our study provides behavioral and electrophysiological evidence that sexism-related stigma affects the pain perception of females.

Figure 1

Experimental design and behavioral results in Experiment 1: (a) experimental design; (b) threshold in the pretest and posttest; (c) tolerance in the pretest and posttest; (d) the effect of condition on pain threshold; (e) the effect of condition on pain tolerance (∗∗∗p < 0.001, ∗∗p < 0.01, and ∗p < 0.05).

Figure 2

Experimental design and behavioral results in Experiments 2 and 3. (a) The material samples used in Experiment 2 and the results of stimulation assessment. (b) The experimental setup used in Experiments 2 and 3. (c) The effect of condition on ratings of pain intensity in Experiment 2. (d) The effect of condition on ratings of pain intensity in Experiment 3. (^∗∗∗p < .001, ^∗∗p < .01, and ^∗p < .05).

Figure 3

Laser-evoked potentials (N1 wave) in four experimental conditions. N1 amplitudes were significantly higher in the stigma condition than those in the control condition (^∗p < 0.05). Scalp topographies of N1 waves in four conditions were displayed at their peak latencies.

Figure 4

Laser-evoked potentials (N2 and P2 waves) in four experimental conditions. P2 latencies were significantly earlier in the stigma condition than in the control condition (^∗p ≤ 0.05). Scalp topographies of N2 and P2 waves in four conditions were displayed at their peak latencies.

Figure 5

Laser-evoked modulations of EEG responses in four experimental conditions. LEP magnitude in the stigma condition was significantly larger than that in the control condition (^∗p < 0.05). No significant difference was observed in alpha-ERD magnitude measured at occipital electrodes (PO3, PO4, PO7, PO8, O1, and O2) between the sigma and control conditions. Scalp topographies of response magnitudes in four conditions were displayed for each time-frequency feature (i.e., LEP and alpha-ERD).