Learn about why social egalitarians are more likely to discriminate against older adults; why throbbing pain has nothing to do with your pulse; and why naturally gluten-free food is labeled gluten-free.
Learn about why social egalitarians are more likely to discriminate against older adults; why throbbing pain has nothing to do with your pulse; and why naturally gluten-free food is labeled gluten-free.
The biggest advocates for equality are most likely to discriminate against older adults at work by Kelsey Donk
Throbbing pain has nothing to do with your pulse by Cameron Duke
Why Does Food That Already Doesn't Contain Gluten Say Gluten-Free? originally aired June 5, 2018 https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/gluten-free-labels-the-fbi-s-most-viewed-file-and
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/throbbing-pain-has-nothing-to-do-with-your-pulse
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about a mostly invisible type of discrimination you might not even know about; why throbbing pain has nothing to do with your pulse; and why naturally gluten-free food is labeled gluten-free.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Ageism is a big but mostly invisible problem. In the United States, older people report almost as much workplace discrimination as women and people of color. But they aren’t often the focus of workplace equality programs. And according to new research, the very people most likely to advocate for workplace equality could also be the most likely to discriminate against their older colleagues. But knowing is half the battle! So let’s talk about how we know this and what we can do about it.
In the past, studies have defined social egalitarians as those who advocate for the equal treatment of all people. But a group of researchers were curious about whether that was actually true: is someone who’s against, say, sexism and racism also against ageism?
It’s a good question because ageism is so casual and accepted in the American workplace. It’s pretty common to hear people say that older people don’t have as many new ideas, or can’t figure out technology.
So researchers from Stanford and NYU measured what they called egalitarian advocacy: basically, the commitment to creating a more equal society. The first results were no surprise: people who scored highest in egalitarian advocacy were most disapproving of racism and sexism. But that same group was also more likely to think that older people should step aside and make room for younger people in their jobs. Yikes!
Later on, the researchers ran a study where participants pretended they had a million-dollar fund to split between minority groups. The more egalitarian the participants were, the more likely they were to give their pretend money to women and people of color, and the less likely they were to give that money to older people.
So why did the most egalitarian people have the most prejudice against older people? The researchers gave the participants a questionnaire to find out. According to the results, it seems that the most egalitarian people are likely to believe that older people prevent women and people of color from accessing resources and getting ahead. As a result, most of the bias was against older white men, but not all of it. The researchers found that the bias even extended to older Black women.
So how can we fix this? The researchers have one clue: when they told the participants about how many older people in the United States struggled financially and were unable to retire, it reduced their bias. And the most egalitarian among them had the biggest reduction of all.
Have you ever smashed a finger in a car door, gotten a toothache, or just had a really terrible migraine? At the time, you probably felt a throbbing pain in that location — and you probably assumed it was your heartbeat. Guess what? It wasn’t. That throbbing has nothing to do with your heartbeat — and may have more to do with your brain.
Alright, let me explain. Throbbing pain, like the kind you get with a migraine or a minor, but super painful injury, has long been associated with heartbeat. Your heart beats, your injury throbs, blood vessels dilate to carry platelet-rich blood to the injury to help with blood clotting. It all adds up. Or does it?
In 2011, a medical researcher named Andrew Ahn decided to finally look into the cause of throbbing pain. He had patients with migraine pain report the pulse rate of the throbbing they felt while he recorded their heart rates. If the throbbing we feel in injuries is a result of our pulse, we would expect it to sync up with heart rate. Instead, he found that there was no relationship between the pulse in your smashed finger and your actual pulse. If anything, he found that throbbing pain slows down as heart rate increases. The following year, he examined people with dental pain and found the same thing. Just like that, he found evidence that contradicted a major assumption that might date all the way back to Aristotle. But it raised a new question. If it’s not your pulse, then what causes that throbbing?
In 2013, he did another experiment. This time, he enlisted the help of a chronic migraine sufferer. While monitoring her brain activity with an EEG, he noticed two things. While her pulsating pain had no relationship to her heart rate, it did have a relationship to a type of brain wave known as an alpha wave. As the throbbing became more intense, her alpha waves did too. Her alpha waves also pulsed with the frequency of her pain.
Alpha waves, and brain waves in general, are produced by neurons in the brain as they fire. This means that intense, throbbing pain might have more to do with the way your brain perceives pain than the injury itself. Scientists still don’t know why alpha waves pulse this way as a response to pain, though. So there are still some mysteries here left to be solved.
But the next time you stub your toe or smash your finger, remember that throbbing pain is all in your head.
CODY: For today’s last segment, we’ve remastered a still-relevant story from 2018. Something you might want to keep in mind on your next trip to the grocery store.
[ASHLEY: 1:53 clip]
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Kelsey Donk and Cameron Duke, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow for another gluten-free episode of Curiosity Daily to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!