Gender, anxiety, and experimental pain sensitivity: an overview

Our objective was to review human experimental studies to see if anxiety had a differential impact on the pain perceptions of men and women. We searched MEDLINE and PsycINFO for studies of anxiety and pain sensitivity in men and women published from 1966 to 2001. Research indicated that women are more sensitive to pain than men, and that anxiety may be partly responsible for the observed differences. Anxiety may also differentially affect men's and women's report of pain. Anxiety may be an important factor when considering sex differences in pain perception and warrants further investigation.