If the hand I see being stabbed with a needle is ~obviously~ not mine, my brain only responds with, “Hey, that looks like it could hurt.”

If the hand being stabbed look like mine, my brain responds with, “OW! OW! OW! OW! OW! OW! … Oh, wait…that’s not me.”

I think this study is more about “embodiment of others’ painful sensations” – not exactly empathy – at least not emotional empathy. All the effects of race are found at a sensorimotor, not emotional level of brain processing.
Interestingly, it seems that emotional reactivity (skin conductance response), although less immediate, is present also for the pain of outgroup members: thus, even when racial bias is at play, people emotionally react to the pain of outgroup members – slowly, but they do!
This leads me to think about how embodiment and emotional empathy may be related to racism etc. Imagine you are watching a dog in pain. Even if you feel emotions for the dog (e.g. concern), probably your brain will not embody the dog’s pain in your sensorimotor neural maps – as if you were feeling the dog’s pain on your body.
I think something similar may automatically happen in the brain of people with high racial bias when perceiving the pain of outgroup members. In principle they may feel unpleasant emotions for others-race pain (even concern?!). But, according to this research, their brain would treat that pain as the pain of a non-human being.
This is a neuroscientific proof that racists perceive other-race members in a de-humanized manner. I’m wondering what type of legal implications this research may have.

Were the black Italians African immigrants, or were they born and raised in Italy? Did the black Italians associate negative words with the term “Italian” and positive words with the term “African”?

When the race IAT is used on American participants, white Americans have a pro-white bias, but black Americans on the whole have both a pro-white and pro-black bias. I assume that this is because American culture as a whole associates whiteness with positivity and blackness with negativity, and black Americans are raised in American culture. I wonder if the black Italians were raised in a black-majority culture, or if they were raised in white-majority Italy.

I am not saying people don’t have racial bias or prejudice, but i am unconvinced this study shows that. Numerous studies have shown that people empathize with others and that they empathize faster with those closest to their own appearance. This study is no different.

I might suggest a way to test this though. Have the people paint or dye their hands to look like those in the picture and see if their reactions are altered. Would they then respond to the other color as their own or their natural skin color?

I make no such claim. I know I am a human being who strives daily to put aside the less admirable parts of my upbringing. HoweverI squirm at the idea of being tested for how I really feel rather than how I think I do — but it might be good for me to see it so I could be more aware of how to overcome it better.

We see the hand of our own colour, and we identify with its pain easily, as we don’t require much imagination to think of it as us. With the purple hand, because we do _not_ identify it with an _other_, a different group that cannot be us, we don’t have any baggage surrounding it. Think children’s characters, such as Dr. Seuss characters, where our anthropomorphic tendencies is to equate these strange creatures with ourselves, even if they talk nonsense words.

Contrast this with a hand that is of a skin colour which exists in humanity, but is not closely matched to our own background. It is more difficult to think of that person as _us_, because we can categorized him/her as someone of that other group.

This study is intriguing, and it opens the door to many other questions.

Too bad we ate or killed the people that could have managed the planet long enough to sustain it. Just because we are the last men standing doesn’t mean we are the best men.