TY - JOUR
T1 - Generous to whom? The influence of oxytocin on social discounting
AU - Pornpattananangkul, Narun
AU - Zhang, Junfeng
AU - Chen, Qiaoyu
AU - Kok, Bing Cai
AU - Yu, Rongjun
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2017/5/1
Y1 - 2017/5/1
N2 - Oxytocin is thought to play an essential role in pro-social behaviors, such as generosity and altruism, in humans. Yet, most research in humans that demonstrated the pro-social effect of oxytocin had participants interact with partners who were total strangers to them. In real life, however, people often interact with others varying in social relatedness with them (a concept known as social distance), ranging from their parents to total strangers. Here we employed the social-discounting framework to investigate whether the effect of oxytocin on prosociality depends on the social distance between the participants and their interaction partners. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment (n = 172 participants), we measured the amount of money participants were willing to forgo to another person as a function of social distance. We found that oxytocin administration selectively enhanced amount of money forgone toward total strangers, as opposed to someone closer to participants, suggesting that social distance constrained the pro-social effect of oxytocin.
AB - Oxytocin is thought to play an essential role in pro-social behaviors, such as generosity and altruism, in humans. Yet, most research in humans that demonstrated the pro-social effect of oxytocin had participants interact with partners who were total strangers to them. In real life, however, people often interact with others varying in social relatedness with them (a concept known as social distance), ranging from their parents to total strangers. Here we employed the social-discounting framework to investigate whether the effect of oxytocin on prosociality depends on the social distance between the participants and their interaction partners. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment (n = 172 participants), we measured the amount of money participants were willing to forgo to another person as a function of social distance. We found that oxytocin administration selectively enhanced amount of money forgone toward total strangers, as opposed to someone closer to participants, suggesting that social distance constrained the pro-social effect of oxytocin.
KW - Affiliative motivation
KW - Altruism
KW - Generosity
KW - Oxytocin
KW - Prosociality
KW - Social discounting
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85014348403&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.02.016
DO - 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.02.016
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 28273587
AN - SCOPUS:85014348403
SN - 0306-4530
VL - 79
SP - 93
EP - 97
JO - Psychoneuroendocrinology
JF - Psychoneuroendocrinology
ER -