Pain is universal, but we don’t all experience it the same way.
The scientific community became more deeply aware of this phenomenon in 1980 after the publication of a classic study in Science. Researchers asked Nepalese porters, accustomed to carrying large loads up the slopes of the Himalayas, to rate how painful they felt an electric shock to be. When their responses were compared with those of Westerners on the same trek, the porters reported their pain to be far less severe than did their Western counterparts.
