BEAUTIFUL FACES IN PAIN - BIASES AND ACCURACY IN THE PERCEPTION OF PAIN

The impact of appearance-based information on judgments about the psyc hological functioning of pain patients was investigated. Video-tapes o f low back pain patients experiencing pain were used as stimulus mater ials. Subjects viewed silent video clips and photographs of the patien ts' faces and made judgments about the functioning of these patients. These judgments were affected both by patient physical attractiveness and gender. Physically attractive patients and male patients were judg ed to be functioning better than physically unattractive and female pa tients. The judgments were reasonably described as biased because the perceived differences about patients varying in attractiveness and sex were not associated with measures of actual patient functioning.