Racial differences in pain treatment and empathy in a Canadian sample.

Background: Evidence of inadequate pain treatment as a result of patient race has been extensively documented, yet remains poorly understood. Previous research has indicated that nonwhite patients are significantly more likely to be undertreated for pain.

Objective: To determine whether previous findings of racial biases in pain treatment recommendations and empathy are generalizable to a sample of Canadian observers and, if so, to determine whether empathy biases mediate the pain treatment disparity.

Reducing racial disparities in pain treatment: the role of empathy and perspective-taking.

Epidemiological evidence indicates that African Americans receive lower quality pain treatment than European Americans. However, the factors causing these disparities remain unidentified, and solutions to this problem remain elusive. Across three laboratory experiments, we examined the hypotheses that empathy is not only causing pain treatment disparities but that empathy-inducing interventions can reduce these disparities.

Why are some individuals not racially biased? Susceptibility to affective conditioning predicts nonprejudice toward blacks.

Two studies investigated the psychological underpinnings of racial nonbias, defined as extremely low or null bias on measures of implicit and explicit racial attitudes. In Study 1, racially nonbiased Whites showed differential susceptibility to affective conditioning compared with subjects with greater bias. A significant two-way interaction emerged, indicating that nonbiased individuals were significantly less likely than other individuals to acquire negative affective associations to neutral stimuli in a classical conditioning paradigm, but were more likely than other individuals to acquire positive affective associations to neutral stimuli.

Parenting narcissus: what are the links between parenting and narcissism?

Previous theorizing by clinical psychologists suggests that adolescent narcissism may be related to parenting practices (Kernberg, 1975; Kohut, 1977). Two studies investigated the relations between parenting dimensions (i.e.