Racial bias in pediatric pain perception

Racial disparities in pediatric pain care are prevalent across a variety of healthcare settings, and likely contribute to broader disparities in health, morbidity, and mortality. The present research expands on prior work demonstrating potential perceptual contributions to pain care disparities in adults and tests whether racial bias in pain perception extends to child targets. We examined the perception and hypothetical treatment of pain in Black and White boys (Experiment 1), Black and White boys and girls (Experiment 2), Black and White boys and adult men (Experiment 3), and Black, White, Asian, and Latinx boys (Experiment 4). Across this work, pain was less readily perceived on Black (versus White) boys’ faces—though this bias was not observed within girls. Moreover, this perceptual bias was comparable in magnitude to the same bias measured with adult targets and consistently predicted bias in hypothetical treatment. Notably, bias was not limited to Black targets—pain on Hispanic/Latinx boys’ faces was also relatively underperceived. Taken together, these results offer strong evidence for racial bias in pediatric pain perception.