“…In addition to subjective verbal reports on the effect of the stimuli (which are however prone to a number of limitations, Guadagni et al., 2019; Pistoia et al., 2015), a number of more objective physiological indices of sensorimotor or affective reactivity to others' pain were obtained. In particular, we collected data regarding: (i) responses involving facial muscles (which are closely connected to sensorimotor responses, Sun et al., 2015), in particular, by means of facial electromyography of the left Corrugator and the Zygomaticus muscles (under the assumption that the former is associated with emotional responses linked to fear, worry and pain, i.e., the experimental condition, and the latter is linked to happy facial expressions, i.e., the control condition); (ii) ElectroDermal Activity (EDA) which is an autonomic index of ortho‐sympathetic activity that is associated with changes in arousal and affective responses (Folz et al., 2022; Ganapathy & Swaminathan, 2019; Polo et al., 2022; Rao Veeranki et al., 2021; Vinberg et al., 2022; Zitouni et al., 2023), and (iii) Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA), which is a physiological index related to cardiac parasympathetic tone. The computation of this index is based on the tendency of the heart rate to accelerate during inhalation and to decelerate during exhalation, a phenomenon related to the interaction between the cardiovascular and respiratory systems.…”