Gender role expectation of pain predicts response to experimentally-induced pain in healthy Libyan participants

Gender Role Expectancy of Pain (GREP) is a 12 items questionnaire (1) measuring three dimensions of pain; pain sensitivity, pain endurance and willingness to report pain. Recently, Defrin et al (2) found that men had a higher tolerance to heat pain, which correlated with self perception of pain sensitivity. However, there were no sex differences in heat pain threshold (HPT), and no correlation between GREP items and HPT. Comparison with American studies (1,3) suggested that GREP was affected by culture. Main conclusion: Pain sensitivity and willingness to report pain, as measured by GREP, predicted pain threshold and pain intensity.