Does the blood of black people clot more readily than that of white people? Does black skin generally have more collagen – is it thicker – than white skin? Are blacks better at detecting movement? Do they age more slowly?

If you are white and said yes – or even maybe – to any of the questions above, you are not alone in falling prey to false beliefs about physiological differences between white and black people. A new study reveals that in a group of 222 white medical students, half judged as possibly, probably or definitely true at least one of 11 false beliefs about racial differences.

And that may not be without consequences.

PAINSTAKING STUDY

Possibly swayed by false beliefs about biological differences between white and black people, some white medical students tend to rate the physical pain of a hypothetical African-American patient as less severe than that of a white patient in the same circumstances, says a study published Monday in the journal PNAS.

That cascade of race-based assumptions is, in turn, linked to prescribing decisions that treat white patients’ pain more aggressively than that of black patients, the study concludes.

The findings illuminate an often-observed disparity in the treatment of whites and blacks when it comes to treating pain: Research has long shown that in a wide range of circumstances, black patients are less likely to get pain medications and, when they do, are prescribed less, than are white patients reporting the same conditions.

A group of psychology researchers from the University of Virginia set out to explore whether that disparity might spring from beliefs about racial differences that were long deeply rooted in U.S. society. The belief that African-Americans are more robust and physically resilient than white Americans – and therefore that they feel less pain – may stem from the assumption that only the strongest survived the physical rigors of slavery. Or it may have been passed down from self-serving slave-owners who wished to believe that their slaves did not suffer from back-breaking work.

GOING BEYOND BIOLOGY

Research has established that racial differences in disease rates exist. But researchers tend to see social and economic differences, as well as racial disparities in health care access, as the real contributors to differing health outcomes between black and white Americans.

The white medical students who took part in the study all attended the same university. The study offered participants 15 statements about physiological differences that fall along race lines and asked them to rate whether the statements were either definitely, probably or possibly untrue or possibly, probably or definitely true.

Four of those statements actually are true – that blacks have denser, stronger bones than whites, are less likely than whites to contract spinal cord diseases such as multiple sclerosis, and are more likely to develop heart disease and to have a stroke. Among the false beliefs offered: that white people have larger brains and more efficient respiratory systems than black people; and that compared with whites, black people have stronger immune systems, have a far more acute sense of smell, and are significantly more fertile..

Researchers found that the more false beliefs about racial differences a medical student subscribed to, the more likely he or she was to judge a white person’s pain to be more severe than that of a black person. Embracing more false beliefs also predicted that a subject would correctly prescribe the level of pain relief recommended in the case of the white patient, but would underestimate the standard pain relief needed for the black patient’s reported level of pain.

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