Gender differences in attention to pain body postures in a social context

Walsh, Joe, Eccleston, C and Keogh, E (2020) Gender differences in attention to pain body postures in a social context. PAIN, 161 (8). pp. 1776-1786.

[img]
Preview
Text
11021-Walsh-(2020)-Gender_differences_in_attention_to_pain_body.12.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial 4.0.

Download (451kB) | Preview

Abstract

Pain signals the presence of potential harm, captures attention, and can inhibit performance on concurrent tasks. What is less well known, however, is whether such attentional capture also occurs in a wider social context, such as when observing people in pain. In order to explore this possibility, we adopted a novel social-cue detection methodology: the bodies-in-the-crowd task. Two experiments are reported that consider whether nonverbal cues of pain, happiness and anger as expressed through body postures would capture and hold attention. Both experiments recruited 40 (20 male, 20 female) pain-free individuals. Overall, results show that pain postures do not capture attention any more than happiness or anger postures, but disengagement from pain postures was significantly slower across both studies. Gender differences were also found, and were more likely to be found, when crowds comprised both men and women. Male pain postures were more likely to capture attention. Whilst female observers had faster target detection speed, and were quicker to disengage from distractors. They also showed slower disengagement from female expressions overall. Male observers showed no variation based on target or distractor gender. Implications and potential directions for future research are discussed.

Item Type: Article
Article Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: pain; communication; body posture; nonverbal behaviour; attention
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions: Schools and Research Institutes > School of Education and Science
Research Priority Areas: Health, Life Sciences, Sport and Wellbeing
Depositing User: Anne Pengelly
Date Deposited: 01 Jun 2022 08:33
Last Modified: 31 Aug 2023 09:04
URI: https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/11021

University Staff: Request a correction | Repository Editors: Update this record

University Of Gloucestershire

Bookmark and Share

Find Us On Social Media:

Social Media Icons Facebook Twitter YouTube Pinterest Linkedin

Other University Web Sites

University of Gloucestershire, The Park, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 2RH. Telephone +44 (0)844 8010001.