Skin conductance and heart rate responses to the observation of pain in same and different race individuals

We studied the skin conductance and heart rate responses in two different racial groups when intra- and inter-racial pain was observed. Thirty-two white (16) and black (16) subjects were required to passively observe a movie (1.8 s) where a black or white hand appeared and was penetrated by a needle (black and white pain conditions) or touched by a cotton stick (black and white touch conditions). A total of three sessions of 16 pseudo-randomized movie trials were presented. Skin conductance response (SCR) and heart rate (HR) were simultaneously recorded during the experiment. For each measured variable, a two-way repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) revealed a main effect of condition (black hand pain, white hand pain, black hand touch and white hand touch) [SCR: F(3,90) = 4.33, p = 0.0067; HR: F(3,90) = 3.36, p = 0.022] but not of race (black vs white) [SCR: F(1,30) = 1.74, p = 0.20; HR