Pain and satisfaction: healthcare providers' facial appearance matters.


Journal

Psychological research
ISSN: 1430-2772
Titre abrégé: Psychol Res
Pays: Germany
ID NLM: 0435062

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
Jun 2021
Historique:
received: 06 09 2019
accepted: 24 03 2020
pubmed: 9 4 2020
medline: 29 6 2021
entrez: 9 4 2020
Statut: ppublish

Résumé

Trait inferences based solely on facial appearance affect many social decisions. Here we tested whether the effects of such inferences extend to the perception of physical sensations. In an actual clinical setting, we show that healthcare providers' facial appearance is a strong predictor of pain experienced by patients during a medical procedure. The effect was specific to familiarity: facial features of healthcare providers that convey feelings of familiarity were associated with a decrease in patients' perception of pain. In addition, caring appearance of the healthcare providers was significantly related to patients' satisfaction with the care they received. Besides indicating that rapid, unreflective trait inferences from facial appearance may affect important healthcare outcomes, these findings contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms underlying social modulation of pain perception.

Identifiants

pubmed: 32266544
doi: 10.1007/s00426-020-01330-3
pii: 10.1007/s00426-020-01330-3
doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article

Langues

eng

Sous-ensembles de citation

IM

Pagination

1706-1712

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Auteurs

Katia Mattarozzi (K)

Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, V.le Berti Pichat, 5, 40127, Bologna, Italy. katia.mattarozzi@unibo.it.

Elisa Caponera (E)

National Institute for the Evaluation of Educational System, Rome, Italy.

Paolo Maria Russo (PM)

Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, V.le Berti Pichat, 5, 40127, Bologna, Italy.

Valentina Colonnello (V)

Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, V.le Berti Pichat, 5, 40127, Bologna, Italy.

Margherita Bassetti (M)

Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, V.le Berti Pichat, 5, 40127, Bologna, Italy.

Elena Farolfi (E)

Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, V.le Berti Pichat, 5, 40127, Bologna, Italy.

Alexander Todorov (A)

Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA.

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