Social cues influence perception of others' pain

Overview & Synopsis

Background Accurately perceiving other people's pain is important in both daily life and healthcare settings. However, judging other's pain is inherently difficult and can be biased by various social and cultural factors. Here, we examined whether perception of others' pain and pain management recommendations are socially influenced by seeing the opinions of other raters. Methods In Experiment 1 ( N = 50), participants rated pictures depicting injured hands or feet of pre‐selected high, medium and low intensities. Each picture was preceded by cues indicating ratings of 10 previous participants. Cues were randomized to indicate low (Social LOW ) or high (Social HIGH ) pain judgements and were not predictive of actual normative pain intensity. In Experiment 2 ( N = 209), participants viewed facial video clips of patients with chronic shoulder pain making painful movements. They estimated patients' pain intensity and provided pain management recommendations. Results Experiment 1 revealed that perceivers' pain estimates were significantly and substantially higher for stimuli following Social HIGH than Social LOW cues (Cohen's d = 1.26, p