Documenting Race and Gender Biases in Pain Assessment and a Novel Intervention Designed to Reduce Biases.

Disparities in pain care are well-documented such that women and people of color have their pain undertreated and underestimated compared to men and White people. One of the contributors of the undertreatment of pain for people of color and women may be the inaccurate assessment of pain. Understanding the pain assessment process is an important step in evaluating the magnitude of and intervening on pain disparities in care. In the current work, we focus on documenting intersectional race and gender biases in pain assessment and present the results of a novel intervention for reducing these biases. Across 3 studies (N = 532) and a mini meta-analysis using real videotaped people in pain as stimuli, we demonstrate that observers disproportionately underestimated women of color's pain compared to all other groups (men of color, White women, and White men). In study 3 (N = 232), we show that a novel intervention focused on behavioral skill building (ie, practice and immediate feedback) significantly reduced observers' pain assessment biases toward marginalized groups compared to all other types of trainings (raising awareness of societal biases, raising awareness of self-biases, and a control condition). While it is an open question as to how long this type of intervention lasts, behavioral skills building around assessing marginalized people's pain more accurately is a promising training tool for health care professionals. PERSPECTIVE: This article demonstrates the underestimation of pain among people of color and women. We also found support that a novel intervention reduced observers' pain assessment biases toward marginalized groups. This could be used in medical education or clinical care to reduce intersectional pain care disparities.

Preserving privacy in the era of openness: Commentary on open science requirements for identifiable data in psychological science journals.

Psychological science journals are increasingly adopting open science (OS) policies (e.g., Transparency and Openness Promotion) requiring researchers to make all data and materials publicly available in an effort to drive research toward greater transparency and accessibility. These policies certainly have many benefits to the scientific community and public in helping ensure the quality of published research. However, the Center for Open Science has not offered any explicit guidelines regarding when exceptions to OS policies should be made, with only vague guidelines offered such as "when ethical or legal constraints prevent it." We argue that these ambiguous policies may create bias in decisions made by journal editors as to whom and what type of research is granted exceptions. When journals are too rigid in their exception policies, this may unintentionally contradict OS's goals to create a more valid and ethical science. We argue that journals should never mandate identifiable data to be posted publicly as a publication prerequisite. Maintaining participant anonymity should always come before OS policies to (a) align with psychologists' primary obligation of maintaining participant confidentiality, (b) encourage participation from the broader population and more specifically from marginalized communities, and (c) maintain unbiased, representative, and valid data. From empirical and ethical insights, we offer several solutions to ease the tensions between OS and participant privacy during the data collection and publication process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

"You Look Young! Are You a Doctor?" A Qualitative Content Analysis of Anesthesiology Resident Responses to Ageism in Clinical Encounters.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare trainees frequently report facing comments from their patients pertaining to their age. Exposure to ageist comments from patients may be related to greater stress and/or burnout in residents and may impact the quality of the resident-patient relationship. However, little empirical work has examined ageism expressed toward anesthesiology residents in clinical care, and therefore not much is known about how residents respond to these comments in practice. This research sought to determine how anesthesiology residents responded to ageist comments. METHODS: Anesthesiology residents (N = 60) engaged in a preoperative interaction with a standardized patient who was instructed to make an ageist comment to the resident. Resident responses were transcribed and coded using qualitative inductive content analysis to identify response themes. RESULTS: The most common resident response to the ageist comment, across gender and resident year, was to state their own experience. Some also described how they were still in training or that they were under supervision. Residents rarely reassured the patient that they would receive good care or identified the patient's anxiety as a cause of the ageist remark. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide a first step in understanding how ageism may be navigated by residents in clinical encounters. The authors discuss potential avenues for future research and education for responding to ageist remarks for both patients and clinicians.

Should I post? The relationships among social media use, emotion recognition, and mental health.

Introduction: While increased time spent on social media can be negatively related to one's overall mental health, social media research often fails to account for what behaviors users are actually engaging in while they are online. The present research helps to address this gap by measuring participants' active and passive social media behavioral styles and investigates whether and how these two social media behavioral styles are related to depression, anxiety, and stress, and the mediating role of emotion recognition ability in this relationship. Methods: A pre-study (N = 128) tested whether various social media behaviors reliably grouped into active and passive behavioral styles, and a main study (N = 139) tested the relationships between social media use style, emotion recognition, and mental health. Results: While we did not find evidence of a mediating relationship between these variables, results supported that more active social media use was related to more severe anxiety and stress as well as poorer emotion recognition skill, while passive social media use was unrelated to these outcomes. Discussion: These findings highlight that, beyond objective time spent on social media, future research must consider how users are spending their time online.

More Than Meets the Eyes: Bringing Attention to the Eyes Increases First Impressions of Warmth and Competence.

The present research examined how face masks alter first impressions of warmth and competence for different racial groups. Participants were randomly assigned to view photographs of White, Black, and Asian targets with or without masks. Across four separate studies (total N = 1,012), masked targets were rated significantly higher in warmth and competence compared with unmasked targets, regardless of their race. However, Asian targets benefited the least from being seen masked compared with Black or White targets. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate how the positive effect of masks is likely due to these clothing garments re-directing attention toward the eyes of the wearer. Participants viewing faces cropped to the eyes (Study 3), or instructed to gaze into the eyes of faces (Study 4), rated these targets similarly to masked targets, and higher than unmasked targets. Neither political affiliation, belief in mask effectiveness, nor explicit racial prejudice moderated any hypothesized effects.

Patient Preference for Telehealth Background Shapes Impressions of Physicians and Information Recall: A Randomized Experiment.

Introduction: Telehealth is increasing rapidly as a health care delivery platform, but we lack empirical evidence regarding how telehealth environments can affect patient experiences. The present research determined how physician's telehealth backgrounds affect various patient outcomes. Methods: Participants viewed a 30-s video of a physician with one of six different virtual backgrounds and reported various socioemotional and cognitive responses to the mock telehealth experience. Results: Although the telehealth background manipulation did not impact participants' socioemotional or cognitive responses, participants' subjective perceptions of the telehealth backgrounds were related to important clinical outcomes, such as their ability to remember critical information from the appointment and overall satisfaction with the experience. Discussion: Telehealth environments may result in tradeoffs between patient experience, subjective impressions of clinicians, and information recall. Conclusions: A physician's telehealth background can have measurable impact on patients' telehealth experiences, suggesting a need for careful background selection and design.

Empathy, friend or foe? Untangling the relationship between empathy and burnout in helping professions.

The relationship between empathy and burnout in helping professions has been debated extensively, with some arguing the tendency to vicariously experience the emotions of another is a risk factor for burnout and others arguing that this disposition protects against burnout. We sought to aid this debate by assessing the relationship between two empathy facets, positive and negative, and burnout across three samples of helping professionals: practicing clinicians (N = 59), medical students (N = 76), and teaching assistants (N = 77). Results across all three samples consistently revealed that one's tendency to share in the positive emotions of another (i.e., positive empathy) was related to lower levels of burnout, even after controlling for several potential confounding factors. Beyond discussing the utility of the emerging study of positive empathy, we offer potential avenues for reducing burnout in helping professions by emphasizing the importance of sharing in the positive emotions of others.

What is your empathy scale not measuring? The convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of five empathy scales.

Recent reviews of the emapthy literature have revealed that nearly half of the published studies on empathy employed an empathy measure that did not align precisely with the theoretical definition the author provided. This may occur because researchers might not know what each published empathy scale actually measures. The present research begins to address this problem by reporting a large set of correlates for five different empathy scales to enable researchers to review the interpersonal traits and abilities each scale predicted. Participants (N = 182) completed the Davis IRI and the empirically derived Hogan Empathy Scale (HES). Each empathy scale produced its own unique pattern of correlates with empathy related traits that more or less supported each scale's description. However, none of the five scales reliably predicted empathy related abilities. We discuss the importance of examining a scale's predictive validity over its reliability, face-validity, popularity, or name.

Greater belief in science predicts mask-wearing behavior during COVID-19.

We investigated whether and how individual's belief in science directly impacts reported face mask wearing behavior in the United States and the mediating role of belief in mask effectiveness in preventing transmission of COVID-19 in this relationship. Mechanical Turk participants (N = 1050) completed measures on reported face mask wearing behavior, general beliefs in science, belief in face mask effectiveness in reducing transmission of COVID-19, and sociodemographic information. We found evidence that greater belief in science predicted greater belief in the effectiveness of face masks reducing the transmission of COVID-19, which in turn predicted more reported face mask wearing behavior in public, controlling for sociodemographic factors. We urge researchers to engage in more open science practices and science education to increase the public's belief in science and the effectiveness of masks in reducing the transmission of COVID-19 in order to increase the frequency of face mask wearing in public.

Is Technology Enhancing or Hindering Interpersonal Communication? A Framework and Preliminary Results to Examine the Relationship Between Technology Use and Nonverbal Decoding Skill.

Digital technology has facilitated additional means for human communication, allowing social connections across communities, cultures, and continents. However, little is known about the effect these communication technologies have on the ability to accurately recognize and utilize nonverbal behavior cues. We present two competing theories, which suggest (1) the potential for technology use to enhance nonverbal decoding skill or, (2) the potential for technology use to hinder nonverbal decoding skill. We present preliminary results from two studies to test these hypotheses. Study 1 (N = 410) found that global screen time was unrelated to nonverbal decoding skill. However, how participants spent their time using technology mattered. Participants who reported more active technology use (i.e., posting content) self-reported that their nonverbal decoding skill (as measured by the Emotional Sensitivity subscale of the Social Skills Inventory) was superior but performed worse on objective measures of decoding skill (using standardized tests including the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-Adult Faces and the Workplace Interpersonal Perception Skill). By contrast, passive users performed significantly better on objective measures of nonverbal decoding skill; although they did not self-report any difference in their skill compared to less passive users. Study 2 (N = 190), and a mini-meta analysis of both studies, replicated this pattern. These effects suggest a roadmap for understanding the theoretical relationship between technology use and nonverbal communication skills. We also provide recommendations for future research, including the use of experimental designs to determine causal pathways and to advance our conceptual understanding of the relationship between technology use and nonverbal decoding skill.