Rebecca Dore, graduate student in Developmental Psychology at University of Virginia and lead investigator of a study on racial bias in pain perception among children, joins Les Sinclair to talk about her study, Racial Bias in Pain Perception Appears Among Children as Young as 7.

A new University of Virginia psychology study has found that a sample of mostly white American children – as young as 7, and particularly by age 10 – report that black children feel less pain than white children.

The study, which builds on previous research on bias among adults involving pain perception, is published in the Feb. 28 issue of the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.

“Our research shows that a potentially very harmful bias in adults emerges during middle childhood, and appears to develop across childhood,” said the study’s lead investigator, Rebecca Dore, a Ph.D. candidate in developmental psychology at U.Va.

Dore noted that this finding is important because many kinds of explicit biases emerge in early childhood …read more…