Abstract
Perceivers recognize pain less readily on Black (vs. White) faces in the United States. The present work investigated whether this perceptual bias is moderated by target weight and gender across three experiments. Anti-Black bias in pain perception was mitigated within heavier-weight (vs. average-weight) male-appearing targets (Experiment 1) but was independent of female-appearing targets’ weight (Experiment 2). A well-powered, pre-registered Experiment 3 replicated these findings, confirming that target weight and gender interactively shaped anti-Black bias in pain perception: target weight moderated perceptual bias within male-appearing (but not female-appearing) faces. These findings help illuminate factors that interact to shape racial bias in pain perception and demonstrate the importance of intersectionality when studying social perceptual biases.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
