Oxytocin Facilitates Social Learning by Promoting Conformity to Trusted Individuals

Abstract

There is considerable interest in the role of the neuropeptide oxytocin in promoting social cohesion both in terms of promoting specific social bonds and also more generally for increasing our willingness to trust others and/or to conform to their opinions. These latter findings may also be important in the context of a modulatory role for oxytocin in improving the efficacy of behavioral therapy in psychiatric disorders. However, the original landmark studies claiming an important role for oxytocin in enhancing trust in others, primarily using economic game strategies, have been questioned by subsequent meta-analytic approaches or failure to reproduce findings in different contexts. On the other hand, a growing number of studies have consistently reported that oxytocin promotes conformity to the views of groups of in-group individuals. Most recently we have found that oxytocin can increase acceptance of social advice given by individual experts without influencing their perceived trustworthiness per se, but that increased conformity in this context is associated with how much an expert is initially trusted and liked. Oxytocin can also enhance the impact of information given by experts by facilitating expectancy and placebo effects. Here we therefore propose that a key role for oxytocin is not in facilitating social trust per se but in conforming to, and learning from, trusted individuals who are either in-group members and/or perceived experts. The implications of this for social learning and use of oxytocin as an adjunct to behavioral therapy in psychiatric disorders are discussed.

The physiology of play: potential relevance for higher education

“…Oxytocin is synthesised within the hypothalamus and is stored in and released by the pituitary (Meyer-Lindenberg, Domes, Kirsch, & Heinrichs, 2011) in response to stimuli like touch, eye gaze, massage, intimacy and playful interactions (Uvnas-Moberg & Petersson, 2005). Oxytocin is well-established as an enhancer of social behaviour and feelings of togetherness and has been proposed as a key neurotransmitter associated with social competence (Declerck, Boone, & Kiyonari, 2010), pair bonding (Liu & Wang, 2003) and social learning (Xu, Becker, & Kendrick, 2019). As dopamine and oxytocin can create interactions between reward and the social brain centres, including the nucleus accumbens (Liu & Wang, 2003), it might be part of the physiological mechanism behind the proverb 'the family that plays together stays together'.…”

Oxytocin and vasopressin modulation of prisoner’s dilemma strategies

“…In humans, pharmacological studies have demonstrated oxytocin’s role in social cognition in healthy subjects and in psychiatric patients ( Ishak et al, 2011 ; Meyer-Lindenberg et al, 2011 ). For example, intranasal oxytocin increases the perceived trustworthiness of faces ( Theodoridou et al, 2009 ), improves the accuracy of mental-state inferences ( De Dreu et al, 2011 ; Domes et al, 2007 ; Guastella et al, 2010 ), enhances learning from social cues ( Hurlemann et al, 2010 ) and seems to increase conformity ( De Dreu and Kret, 2016 ; Xu et al, 2019 ), particularly in a competitive context ( Aydogan et al, 2017 ). In game theory tasks, it increases generosity ( Barraza et al, 2011 ; Zak et al, 2007 ), cooperation ( Declerck et al, 2010 , 2013 ; Ditzen et al, 2009 ) and trust ( Bakermans-Kranenburg and Van IJzendoorn, 2013 ; Kosfeld et al, 2005 ), although not consistently replicated ( Nave et al, 2015 ), while vasopressin has increased mutual cooperation ( Brunnlieb et al, 2016 ).…”

Oxytocin modulation of self-other distinction is replicable and influenced by oxytocin receptor (OXTR) genotype

“…Particularly, low statistical power [8,9] and replicability of findings [10] of intranasal OXT administration experiments have become a matter of growing concern. Indeed, recent comprehensive replication studies failed to replicate modulatory effects of intranasal OXT on core domains initially associated with OXT, including 'mind reading' [3,11] as well as trust -both when money ( [1]; for contrasting findings [12], critical review by [10]) or confidential personal information were at stake (see review [13]).…”