title: Intergroup relationships do not reduce racial bias in empathic neural responses to pain.
abstract: Perceiving the pain of others activates similar neural structures to those involved in the direct experience of pain, including sensory and affective-motivational areas. Empathic responses can be modulated by race, such that stronger neural activation is elicited by the perception of pain in people of the same race compared with another race. In the present study, we aimed to identify when racial bias occurs in the time course of neural empathic responses to pain. We also investigated whether group affiliation could modulate the race effect. Using the minimal group paradigm, we assigned participants to one of two mixed-race teams. We examined event-related potentials from participants when viewing members of their own and the other team receiving painful or non-painful touch. We identified a significant racial bias in early ERP components at N1 over frontal electrodes, where Painful stimuli elicited a greater negative shift relative to Non-Painful stimuli in response to own race faces only. A long latency empathic response was also found at P3, where there was significant differentiation between Painful and Non-Painful stimuli regardless of Race or Group. There was no evidence that empathy-related brain activity was modulated by minimal group manipulation. These results support a model of empathy for pain that consists of early, automatic bias towards own-race empathic responses and a later top-down cognitive evaluation that does not differentiate between races and may ultimately lead to unbiased behaviour.
authors.affiliation: The University of Queensland, Queensland Brain Institute, QLD 4072, Australia; Laboratory of Cognitive and Social Neuroscience (LaNCyS), UDP-INECO Foundation Core on Neuroscience (UIFCoN), Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile; Centre for the Study of Argumentation and Reasoning (CEAR-UDP), Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile.
authors.forename: Luis Sebastian
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Contreras-Huerta
authors.affiliation: The University of Queensland, Queensland Brain Institute, QLD 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Emily
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hielscher
authors.affiliation: The University of Queensland, Queensland Brain Institute, QLD 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Chase S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Sherwell
authors.affiliation: The University of Queensland, Queensland Brain Institute, QLD 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Natalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Rens
authors.affiliation: The University of Queensland, Queensland Brain Institute, QLD 4072, Australia; The University of Queensland, School of Psychology, QLD 4072, Australia. Electronic address: r.cunnington@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Ross
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cunnington
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D004645:Empathy / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D010146:Pain / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D063505:Racism / Q000523:psychology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: ERP; Empathy; Racial bias; Social group membership