...would the author don a "Race is a Social Construct" t-shirt and walk a quarter-mile in Detroit?
It would an education in itself about future-time orientation, IQ and impulse control.
Dreams have been described as dress rehearsals for real life, opportunities to gratify wishes, and a form of nocturnal therapy. A new theory aims to make sense of it all.
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If you prick us with a pin, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? —Shylock of Venice
When stepping into my neighborhood coffee shop, casually wielding a paper by Hoffman et al. (2016), the barista glanced at the title “Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites” and promptly pronounced it racist, presumably referring to the research findings and not the article per se. The title, it seems, had the desired effect, but do the findings support it?
Hoffman et al. begin by stating that “Black Americans are systematically undertreated for pain relative to white Americans,” and that “this racial bias is related to false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites (e.g., 'Black people’s skin is thicker than white people’s skin').” They find that White “participants who more strongly endorsed false beliefs about biological differences reported lower pain ratings for a black (vs. white) target” (p. 4296).
The context for this research is a set of earlier findings showing that African Americans are prescribed less pain medication for both moderate and severe pain than are Whites (e.g., Mills et al., 2011), yet it remains unclear to what extent this racial differential is a matter of an undertreatment (oligoanalgesia) of Blacks or an overtreatment of Whites. The authors cautiously note that both types of error may be involved. The difficulty here lies in the absence of a clear objective standard for the right treatment level. The authors also note that “racial bias in perceptions of pain (and possibly treatment) does not appear to be borne out of racist attitudes. In other words, it is likely not the result of racist individuals acting in racist ways,” (p. 4297) an observation that further complicates the interpretation of their results.
The first study involved 92 White participants, without medical training, judging the truth vs. falsity of 15 statements about biological differences between Blacks and Whites, 11 of which were in fact false, and judging the pain produced to a Black or a White person by each of 18 events (e.g., “I slam my hand in a car door”). The question then is whether false beliefs about race differences predict a race differential in perceived pain sensitivity. Indeed, those participants who were most likely to endorse false race beliefs rated the described accidents as more painful for Blacks than for Whites. Compared with the ratings made by low endorsers, there appeared to be an increase in the judged pain sensitivity of Whites and a decrease in the judged pain sensitivity of Blacks. In other words, it does not seem appropriate to take the judged pain sensitivity of Whites as judged by the high endorsers as the standard and attribute the entire difference between the judged pain sensitivity of Whites and the judged pain sensitivity of Blacks to a decrement or a decrease in the judgments of Blacks. There is no unambiguous evidence for anti-Black bias in these ratings, although they leave the possibility that there might be such a bias.
The interpretation of these results is complicated by the assessment of false beliefs. Of the 11 false statements, only 2 are face valid predictors of perceptions of pain sensitivity (“Blacks’ nerve endings are less sensitive than whites’,” and “Blacks’ skin is thicker than whites.”). The other false statements are neutral or favor Blacks (e.g., “Blacks have stronger immune systems than whites”). Indeed, a high rate of endorsement of these statements might be interpreted as a pro-Black bias. The authors aggregate over these statements, suggesting that the bias of accepting false biological beliefs as predictors or differential perceptions of pain sensitivity, when potentially the effect is driven only by two topically related items. Second, the authors ignore responses to the true statements (e.g., “Whites are less likely to have strokes than blacks”). This is a critical omission for it might be the case that the primary finding – perceiving Blacks as less pain sensitive than Whites, given other biologically differential beliefs – is simply a matter of endorsing differential race beliefs regardless of their accuracy. Given the authors’ narrative, one might ask for a test of the hypothesis that the degree to which Whites’ preferentially endorse false race beliefs over true ones predicts the difference in their judgments of pain sensitivity. The probability of such a hypothesis to be supported by the data appears to be low a priori. But I could be wrong; so why not test it?
The second study, replicating the design of the first, involved 222 medical students and residents. The findings replicated, sort of. Although high believers (in false and presumably true race differences) judged the pain sensitivity of Blacks to be lower than the pain sensitivity of Whites, the reverse was the case for low believers. The shape of this interaction effect was such that high and low believers did not differ in their ratings of Blacks, but did differ in their ratings of Whites, which, on the face of it, contradicts the theory that high believers are uniquely biased against Blacks. Incidentally, the proportion of high believers was lower in this study (12%) than in the first (50%), which corroborates the suspicion that the effect is not driven uniquely by false beliefs but more generally by gullibility (Krueger, Vogrincic-Haselbacher & Evans, 2019).
The authors also asked participants to recommend treatment, and they report that high believers were more likely to recommend ‘accurate’ treatment for Whites than for Blacks, while there was no difference for low believers. Notice the slippage from talking about the quantity and amount of prescribed medication, and acknowledging the possibility of both over- and undermedication, to flatly referring to accurate recommendations. The authors do not reveal what they mean by "accurate," neither in the main text nor in the supplemental materials, leaving the reader to wonder whether they equate stronger medicine with the correct choice. If this were so, we’d have evidence for race bias among the researchers instead of the subjects. This may seem like a strong suspicion to raise but ask yourself how research subjects would be evaluated if they declared the responses of or for Whites as a normative standard and treated any departure from this standard for a different racial group as ‘an effect’ or as a ‘fact of interest.’ Such a perspective is called othering in the linguistically inventive humanities (Grove & Zwi, 2006), and a default bias in the social psychology of racism, sexism, and other areas of intergroup relations (Devos & Banaji, 2005).
I have studied social categorization, stereotyping, and prejudice for over 30 years, and I am going out on a limb here. It is perfectly clear to me, as it is to most sentient Americans, that Anti-Black racism has been attenuated, but it has not been overcome. Yet, the implicit mission of some of the social-psychological research seems to have crept into an unproductive and scientifically questionable niche. When evidence mounted in the 1960s that explicit prejudice among Whites against Blacks was diminishing, some researchers suspected that this change was, at least in part, a matter of changing norms about what was permissible to express, but not a matter of change in deep-seated perceptions and feelings. These researchers began to look for new, creative, and sensitive ways of measuring prejudice. These efforts yielded impressive advances in unobtrusive and non-reactive measurement as well as theory and measurement of implicit cognition. This is the yin. The yang is that these new measurement instruments have encouraged an ever more relentless quest to suss out bias. The article by Hoffman and colleagues appears to fall into this tradition, leading the reader down the path to assume that physicians and others dehumanize Blacks. The attribution of sensitivity to pain is highly laden with assumptions about a shared humanity. Any reduction in this attribution smacks of empathy gaps and ultimately of cruelty, and that is hostile racism at its worst.
Scientists remain called upon to evaluate the data as comprehensively and impartially as possible. Let not the master narrative dictate the conclusions.
It is always well to read the full narrative and ponder its arc and implications. When Shylock lectures Salarino on the common humanity of Christians and Jews, he is setting the stage for his defense of revenge. He observes that Christians will seek revenge when being wronged; and so will Jews, following the example of those who are so similar to them in so many ways.
Note. The original title of this essay was African Pain. The editors changed it, perhaps they because thought it might be willfully misunderstood.
References
Devos, T., & Banaji, M. R. (2005). American = White? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 447-466.
Grove, N. J., & Zwi, A. B. (2006). Our health and theirs: forced migration, othering, and public health. Social Science & Medicine, 62, 1931-1942.
Hoffman, K. M., Trawalter, S., Axt, J. R., & Oliver, N. (2016). Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites. PNAS, 113, 4296-4301. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1516047113
Krueger, J. I., Vogrincic-Haselbacher, C., & Evans, A. M. (2019). Towards a credible theory of gullibility. In J. P. Forgas & R. F. Baumeister (eds.). Homo credulus: The social psychology of gullibility. https://osf.io/rpbn6
Mills, A. M., Shofer, F. S., Boulis, A. K., Holena, D. N., & Abbuhl, S. B. (2011). Racial disparity in analgesic treatment for ED patients with abdominal or back pain. American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 29, 752-756.
...would the author don a "Race is a Social Construct" t-shirt and walk a quarter-mile in Detroit?
It would an education in itself about future-time orientation, IQ and impulse control.
Anonymous wrote:...would the author don a "Race is a Social Construct" t-shirt and walk a quarter-mile in Detroit?
It would an education in itself about future-time orientation, IQ and impulse control.
Racists are everywhere on the anonymous internet. Oh look: here's one now.
Nothing I write will murder you for your shoes, or simply because the left encourages hatred of YT. No city anywhere in America is improved by large Black populations. No, not one.
Articles like this bring the Troll out of the woodwork, as they are designed to do.
Clever people like this author know that obfuscation, doubt and questioning will get published here, because they are a driver for Advertising, and Social Media amplification.
Publications like this drive Hate, Repression, and Stigma, precisely because of the context.
All of the attention helps their marketing profile.
This publication along with psychologists and marketers re-framed pain, all Pain. It was a good marketing decision, and it created new opportunities for people peddling pseudo science and whatever else they are peddling here.
Another one of these dissembling commentators, choosing to narrow the focus. The only thing allowed anymore in mass media. Racial Bias in all areas of medical and psychological care is well documented. It has a really negative impact on all aspects of people lives.
I know decent Black folks, nonetheless:
wrote:No city anywhere in America is improved by large Black populations.
It's 100% true by any metric you may care to name. The shrinks earn their bread making up endless excuses why Blacks can't get their act together when the truth is staring them and us in the face: lack of future-time orientation, lower IQ, lack of impulse control, males abandoning offspring, dependency on government.
I couldn't care less about being called racist, the word has lost all meaning as a bogeyman for when leftists want to shut down the opposition. It's Current Year, you'll have to do better than that.
It isn't opposition is it is just hate and ignorance, nothing even remotely interesting here. Just another of the Unlaid, getting even with the people someone told him were a target.
The acquisition of vagina doesn't have bearing either way on race realism, not racism, race REALISM.
Self-hating Whites will perish in the floods of diversity. I don't plan to be one of them.
You must be really frustrated. Get in tough with your Mangina!
Of the many bloggers on PT, Joachim Krueger is one of the more serious ones. For me, his posts generally are wise, thought provoking and often profound. And they span many areas as well.
Not only am I shaking my head, but my stomach is turning in response to the tenor of the threads to this post.
Yes, this is a pretty bad thread. I thought about deleting these ignorant and hateful comments, but then I thought let's just see what comes up and how bad it is. It appears to be just a couple of individuals perseverating on their favorite themes.
Do you have any idea, Krueger, how much many trillions Whites burned trying to help Blacks (to no avail)?
Then you swoop in with even MORE nonsense. You painted yourself into this corner. If Blacks and Whites have different physical traits (obvious) then it stands to reason there are many more differences, inc. IQ, abstract reasoning, predisposition to violence, etc.
It is really disturbing, but this stuff is everywhere, especially on more popular sites. The topic of race, draws them in. They also jump on various science sites. I learned a new term today, Dismediation. Where facts are undermined as they try to spread their misinformation. Many of these people are paid, driven by ideology or just plain nasty. This is a targeted campaign, driving out thoughtful discussion.
On the topic itself, the nebulous conclusion was down to create controversy. Kreuger chose to compare the rate of pain medication prescriptions for a certain race, this is well documented factual information, quantitative information. He then relates it to two studies, on racial myths. And concludes that gullibility is a factor. It offsets or dilutes, that proven fact of racial bias. He then suggests empathy, which we can all agree with. This goes far beyond empathy, or gullibility, it is systemic.
I have been asking where the empathy went, and realized that they re framed pain. We are inundated with this psychological nonsense, rethinking facts, and lessening their impact. The internet is full of these false equivalencies pseudo science, and these "influencers. They get a following by creating controversy, and it lures in the trolls.
This publication depends on this for advertising revenue. We need a lot more than empathy, and that is missing when it applies to Systemic injustice. People tend to give this site credibility, and it used to be more credible, now it is merely dating tips, pseudo science,, and Troll Bait.
The Facts are out there. The data about race and medication prescribing rates is a fact. If you dig a little bit you will find similar fact based data on women, and minorities. It shows a systemic problem, yet not many people are concerned. We see the same lack of empathy or concern about children, like the ones on our Border. Factual information came out about medicating children, tearing them from their families, and traumatizing them.
Clever well paid marketing psychologists, created counter narratives for the industries. The counter narrative here, is empathy instead of systemic change or fact based information. Psychologists re-framed all pain, as something that can be cured with their services for a fee. In marketing this, they changed the perception of empathy. Empathy can now be ignoring pain in others, since people in pain are "Catastrophizing" a made up term that became a popular way to dismiss pain, and Gas Light us all. The industries amplified this idea because it was profitable.
Remember the US had psychologists who essentially distorted the pain of torture victims, and medical patients, and children here and overseas. A lot of them believe that pain builds character or resilience. People in denial love those ideas, it fits with their ideology, and they believe it won't happen to them.
This site is full of anecdotal testimonials about alternative medicine, evaluating the science would be boring and turn off readers. People don't like their comfortable worldview challenged in any way.
I should never have engaged with the Troll! These sites attract these types, either coordinated RW Trolls, or people using it to peddle their wares.
"'Catastrophizing' a made up term that became a popular way to dismiss pain"
For someone claiming to be a victim of pseudoscience, that's an outrageous attempt to obfuscate a critically useful bias correction tool for those of us with clinical depression.
Whether or not it's relevant to your own microcosm, it's not a "made-up term".
What,
It might be helpful to actually read about a topic, before responding to it. Also there is a big differnece between how these termsare used in certian practices and how they have been disorted and misused by certian people seeking media attention or corporate funding.
Perhaps the term catastrophization was usefull for your particualr issue, but like everything else without clear definitions, it was applied elsewhere.
A few unscrupulous practitioners, content marketers and greedy corporate lackeys used the term to describe somethig else. Of course they never did any research on the extent of this catastrophization. They also Gas Lighed patients and used parlor tricks in order to find incidents of "catastrophization." They used the word so much, that it gave some very unscrupulous medical and pharma industry enablers, a good catch phrase, with they used for evil intent.
Catastrophization may have been a perfectly good word to describe certian processes of the depressed, but it was more profiable to apply the word to people in much different circumstances, to undermine their character, reinforce mysogyistic stereotypes, and give unscrupulous practitioners and easy out. Of course there is no way to evaluate how the use of this word has led to suicides, deaths and andverse events. Psychologial researchers, would ever research a topic like that, just like there is no money to research adverse events either.
Next time you jump on someone on the internet, perhaps you should look up the definition of the word, and how it is used in popular media.
wrote:Black Americans are systematically undertreated for pain relative to white Americans
So when White medicos ask Black patients to give them a number 1-10 on the Pain scale, they just ignore what the patient says?
#Graspingatstraws
I live in a quiet neighborhood, mostly white, some Hispanic, very few blacks. Tonight, a nice cool, quiet night, I’m walking to the mailbox with my son and we can hear vulgar gangster rap blasting from the nearby community park.
Without missing a beat he says “they ruin everything.”
Sometime a little exposure helps one fully understand what we are dealing with. A subspecies with limited intelligence, best suited for manual labor and sports.
Western civilization has no future as long as we allow our social policy to be dictated by the belief blacks represent some great untapped asset (held back by systemic inequality/structural racism/white power structure) instead of our greatest liability.
I wonder just how sick a person would have to be to make an ill informed statement like that. I remember when Nazis were repugnant. 'Western Civilization" is teetering because of ideas like that.
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