For Women and Men, Pain Not Created Equal

It looks like a macho thing, if macho means being emotionally removed from pain. Researchers at Bath University in England have conducted a series of experiments that, they claim, indicates that women feel pain sooner, more easily, and are less able to deal with it, than men. As this piece in the BBC News reports, volunteers were asked to put their arm in a warm water
bath for two minutes before plunging the same arm into a vat of icy
water for a further two minutes or until they could stand the pain no
longer. The scientists found that women felt pain much sooner than men and were able to endure it for far less time. Furthermore, the BBC reports, when men were asked to think about the
sensory aspects of the pain rather than the emotions related to it, the
pain decreased, while the same strategy did nothing to help the women. Lead researcher Dr Ed Keogh, a psychologist at the Pain Management Unit at the university, suggested that women who concentrate on the emotional aspects of their
pain may actually experience more pain as a result, possibly because
the emotions associated with pain are negative.  Another pain expert, Dr Beverly Collette, from the unfortunately-named British Pain Society, said the phenomenon may be explained by the fact that women have an innate caring role and that
they are therefore more attuned to recognizng pain in themselves as a
warning sign in case it is something danger. Read more.