| Abstract: | One social mechanism by which marginalization is enacted is via ostracism where people with minoritized identities systematically experience greater ostracism. More recent research has demonstrated ostracism⁰́₉s impact on physical health, but little is known about the relationship between accumulated lifetime experiences of ostracism and pain. Despite recent calls for added attention to social modulation of pain and social indicators of pain disparities, the impact of unique social factors on pain ⁰́₃ including those of ostracism ⁰́₃ is not well understood. Results of laboratory studies on the effects of acute ostracism experiences on pain sensitivity have been mixed. However, these studies have focused on acute laboratory ⁰́₃ rather than lived and repeated experiences of ⁰́₃ ostracism and primarily included single static measures, and not dynamic measures, of pain sensitivity. Additionally, they have neglected to examine associations between ostracism experiences and pain among people with minoritized identities. In this study, we explore accumulated lifetime experiences of ostracism as a potential contributing factor to enhanced pain and one social mechanism by which societal inequity may create and maintain inequity in pain. We extracted measures of lifetime experiences of ostracism from six studies focused on social factors and pain conducted between 2016-2020. The total analysis sample includes 505 adults without chronic pain. Results indicate that greater experiences of lifetime ostracism are associated with lower cold pain tolerance. Within-group analyses suggest that the relationship between lifetime ostracism experiences and acute pain sensitivity may be different among racialized groups and community samples. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine whether accumulated lifetime experiences of ostracism are associated with greater pain. This may be an important social indicator of pain that contributes to racialized disparities in pain. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from https://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/197850 |
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