IT IS not too surprising that men take longer to say something hurts when a female experimenter is inflicting the pain. But tests involving a device resembling a medieval thumbscrew show that women, too, take longer to report pain when their tormenter is female.
David Williams of the University of Westminster in London asked volunteers to place a finger in a clamp. Both sexes reported feeling pain more quickly if the person tightening the screw was a man. The findings suggest it is not simply a case of men being macho. Williams suggests that people may be socially conditioned to expect men to be more likely to inflict harm.
He also found that a person鈥檚 surroundings affect their sensitivity to pain. Objects such as a wallchart showing wounds made the participants quicker to report pain (Personality and Individual Differences, DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2003.17.009).
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