Ethnic Differences Among Housewives in Psychophysical Anh Skin Potential Responses to Electric Shock

From earlier work on the effects of instructional sets, it was hypothesized that subcultural differences in attitudes toward pain should be reflected in psycho‐physiological correlates. Yankee, Irish. Jewish, and Italian housewives participated in threshold and magnitude estimation studies of electric shock, and their skin potential responses to repetitive electrical stimulation were recorded. Significant differences in upper thresholds and in the adaptation of diphasic palmar skin potentials are consonant with attitudinal differences, and such differences support earlier findings on the influence of sets on psychophysiological functioning.