Poverty and pain: Low-SES people are believed to be insensitive to pain

Across 10 experiments (N = 1584), we investigated biases in assumptions about pain sensitivity as an explanation for pain treatment disparities across socioeconomic status (SES). We find that lower-SES individuals are believed to feel less pain than higher-SES individuals (Studies 1a-1c), and this effect persists across target demographics including race (i.e., White individuals, Black individuals) and gender (i.e., men, women; Studies 2–3). Next, we examined two potential mechanisms underlying the effect of SES on pain sensitivity: dehumanization and beliefs about life hardship (Studies 4–5). We observed supporting evidence for the differential life hardship account of pain sensitivity biases across SES. Finally, we investigated the downstream consequences of biased pain perception of pain sensitivity for medical care and treatment recommendations, finding that both lay participants (Studies 6–7) and medical providers (Study 8) believe that low-SES individuals are less sensitive to pain and therefore require less intensive pain management. This systematic bias in judgments of pain sensitivity across SES has implications for psychological theory and equitable pain treatment.