Racial bias plays a part in sympathetic response

Science Daily - Racial bias clouds ability to feel others' pain, study shows

Researchers showed videos of variously colored hands getting injured, and measured the viewers' physiological sympathetic responses. It was assumed that the populations measured, black Africans and white Italians, would have racial biases. When videos that showed hands of the same race as the viewer were  pricked with a needle, a "sensorimotor response" arose in the viewer. However, when the viewer saw the other race's hand pricked, the response did not arise (or was diminished?). Interestingly, when viewers saw the injury done to a hand that was differently colored but not racially-charged (in other words, a neutral stranger, with a purple hand), the sympathetic response did occur. Thus the baseline response was concluded to exist, unless the viewer had specific racial bias. The conclusion is that specific racial bias plays a part in the sympathetic response toward others' pain.