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Real men are made, not born! Incidental exposure to energy drinks may promote men's tolerance of physical pain
Author(s) -
Abetkoff Darren,
Karlsson Torulf,
Chiou WenBin
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/sjop.12249
Subject(s) - psychology , pain tolerance , energy (signal processing) , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , medicine , threshold of pain , statistics , mathematics
The energy drink market has grown exponentially since the debut of Red Bull. Advertising of energy drinks tends to reinforce an emphasis on masculine identification. However, no previous study has addressed the symbolic effect of energy drinks on pain tolerance, that is, a particular masculine characteristic. We conducted a priming‐based experiment to show that energy drink primes elevated men's pain tolerance. Induced conformity to masculinity norms mediated the priming effect of energy drinks on pain tolerance. These findings suggest that mere reminders of masculinity‐related products can lead men to behave accordingly in seemingly irrelevant domains (i.e., pain tolerance). Besides distraction and placebo treatment, the connection between a symbolic masculinity prime and greater tolerance of pain may shed lights on an alternative route for pain control.