IT IS not too surprising that men take longer to say something hurts when a female experimenter is inflicting the pain. But tests involving a device resembling a medieval thumbscrew show that women, too, take longer to report pain when their tormenter is female.
David Williams of the University of Westminster in London asked volunteers to place a finger in a clamp. Both sexes reported feeling pain more quickly if the person tightening the screw was a man. The findings suggest it is not simply a case of men being macho. Williams suggests that people may be socially conditioned to…
