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Old 07-06-2008, 01:04 AM   #43 (permalink)
adiemus
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situational context (eg the meaning you draw from the pain) makes a difference (I'm happier to cope with pain from an innoculation than I am if someone is coming at me with a loaded, dirty syringe!); expectation for the future also changes your experience of pain: if I think the pain is doing me good, bringing me closer to g*d, or is a 'rite of passage' then I'm more prepared to tolerate it, if I expect that by experiencing a pain that it will end badly, then I'm less prepared to tolerate it.
So individuals interpret pain differently from one another. However, I'm not citing individual differences, the references I've cited are statistically different for males and females, given the same stimulus in the same context...of course what we can't tell is whether the participants have had the same life experiences!!
I started to post on pain here because I think there could well be some learned behaviours and attitudes that differ across gender groups - with the noted exceptions amongst us of course. Little boys are often involved in more robust physical activities than little girls. Little boys are trained to 'not cry', while little girls are much more 'allowed' to cry. Loads of different reasons - and I'm not say ALL females and ALL males behave in gender-stereotypical ways. But it's an interesting thought: I can cope with pain when it's related to dance, but I don't carry on with plain exercise partly because of the pain!
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