Oxytocin – Oxytocin Blog – Oxytocin Research and News

Hopes that oxytocin may be a cure-all for disorders ranging from shyness to autism appear to have taken a blow with the publication of two different studies over the last month.

Links between oxytocin and increased feelings of trust and empathy have been documented for some time, leading many to speculate that the ‘love hormone’ could form the basis of treatments of such social functioning disorders as autism.

However, it increasingly appears that oxytocin may have a dark side as well, and that its effect on social interaction is not necessarily always positive.

In the first study, Dutch researchers found that oxytocin increased the in-group/out-group mentality in a person, even to the point of increasing racist feelings towards non-Dutch nationals.

But perhaps even more disturbingly, New York medical school researchers claim to have demonstrated that oxytocin simply increases ones existing capacity to feel trust or suspicion.  Jennifer Bartz set up a social co-operation gaming experiment with both healthy and psychologically ‘unhealthy’ volunteers.  Those with borderline personality disorder left the game earlier if they had been given an dose of oxytocin nasal spray.

Her team studied 14 people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and 13 volunteers with no psychiatric conditions. Symptoms of borderline personality disorder include severe insecurity about relationships, fears of abandonment and constant, needy reassurance-seeking from partners.

Borderline personality disorder usually occurs in women, but Bartz’s sample included four men. Her group of healthy participants included seven men.

Members of each group played a computer game with an experimenter posing as a research volunteer. In each of three rounds, volunteers had to predict whether their partner would cooperate with them, so that each player could make $6, or if the partner would leave the game in order to claim $4 alone.

Volunteers who suspected the partner of bad intent could leave the game early and claim $4 for themselves.

Borderline personality players of both sexes left the game early far more often after receiving an oxytocin nasal spray than after whiffing a placebo spray. Inhaling the hormone prodded their already high levels of hostile suspicion and depleted minimal reserves of trust, Bartz suggests.

Research published in the scientific journal ‘Hormones and Behaviour’ suggests that the gaze of a pet dog can raise levels of oxytocin in the owner’s brain.

in­ter­ac­tions with dogs, es­pe­cially those in­i­ti­at­ed by the dog’s gaze, can in­crease the uri­nary [ox­y­to­cin] con­centra­t­ions of their own­ers as a man­i­festa­t­ion of at­tach­ment be­hav­ior.”

Read more about how puppydog eyes trigger oxytocin in owners.

A new study led by a team of Swiss researchers has concluded that oxytocin may help couples to discuss difficult issues and to resolve conflict with less stress.  Couples who were given oxytocin nasal spray were better able to manage a conflict discussion and with less stress than were couples given merely a placebo.  The researchers hope that oxytocin might soon be used as a supplement to couples undergoing cognitive therapy to solve relationship problems.