## 5 Discussion  
The present study aimed to test an original procedure in VR in order to better understand emotional arousal during intergroup helping behaviors. Arousal was both directly monitored during participants' exposure to intergroup helping interactions, which occurred in a familiar, non-emergency environment, and it was self-assessed by participants at the end of their VR experience. Since a relevant effect of helping interactions was the reduction of the social distance between the helper and helpee, signals of pre-existing social distance were expected to amplify emotional arousal during a helping interaction. In order to test the theoretical assumption that was previously discussed in this paper, participants were asked to interact with two confederates, one in the first scenario who provided help and another one who asked for help. The social distance of the confederate was manipulated by crossing two  
Figure 4: (**a**) Distress. The y-axis represents the mean of distress across the three conditions (confederate social appearance) reported on the x-axis, the color of the bars represents the variable confederate group type. Bar Errors +/\(-\)2 SE; (**b**) Empathy. The y-axis represents the mean of empathy across the three conditions (confederate social appearance) reported on the x-axis, the color of the bars represents the variable confederate group type. Bar Errors +/\(-\)2 SE. independent variables: the confederate's ethnicity and social status. During both the help-giving and help-seeking interactions, participants were confronted by a person of the same or different ethnic group (i.e., white or black), who showed signals of either high status (i.e., was dressed like a businessman) or low status (i.e., was dressed like a beggar), depending on the condition. Interestingly, the physiological monitoring of emotional arousal during actual helping interactions, extracted by an EEG tool, and self-assessment of empathic involvement in personal distress, measured after the end of the VR experience, seemed to converge. Regarding alertness, both the information extracted from EEG data and the responses to the empathy scales suggested that participants reacted with alarm and were evaluated as more personally distressed when intergroup helping interactions--both help-seeking and help-giving--involved either a low-status member of the ingroup (i.e., a white beggar) or a high-status member of the outgroup (i.e., a black businessman). In contrast, socially expected conditions elicited a state of calmness or engagement [38] or, in terms of self-assessed measures, empathic interest. Two theoretical frameworks can be used to deepen our discussion of these data. On the one hand, several scholars proposed that intergroup contact situations [39] can increase what they called \"intergroup anxiety [40],\" which makes the social distance between people belonging to different groups more salient. On the other hand, it has been proposed that socially-expected situations produce a higher sense of control, while situations with events that do not follow stereotypical assumptions elicit a state of alarm since people have less possibilities to foresee and manage these surprising occurrences. Based on this, it could be argued that irrespective of their role as the helper or helpee, participants felt alarmed in helping interactions with a low-status ingroup member or a high-status outgroup member, as things occurred in an unexpected and troubling way. Another reason these data are of interest is the fact that the results for self-assessed distress and empathy followed the same tendency as directly measured physiological reactions. This suggests that using both EEG monitoring and self-assessed measures can significantly contribute to deepening the understanding of emotional processes involved in intergroup helping processes. Moreover, allowing participants to discuss virtual intergroup settings can be a powerful tool for enhancing their self-reflective capacities.