Put oxytocin up the nose and then have subjects read about crimes and what happens? They feel sorry for the victims, but don’t necessarily feel extra-vindictive toward the perp.
Krueger F, Parasuraman R, Moody L, Twieg P, de Visser E, McCabe K, O’Hara M, Lee M. Oxytocin selectively increases perceptions of harm for victims but not the desire to punish offenders of criminal offenses. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2012 Feb 24. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 22368214.
Well now. This post writes itself. If you are a victim who is paying a jury consultant a fortune for their scientifically-proven jury selection, perhaps they should look for jurors with the prosocial form of the oxytocin receptor gene (the kind you can pick out in 20 seconds, our post here). If you are a defendant, perhaps your jury consultant should pick out, shall we say, le poisson froid, to avoid empathizing with the victim.
Here’s evidence that you give someone with a personality disorder oxytocin and they might just feel like doing something selfish and anti-social: http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/11/28/scan.nsq085.full
Borderline’s are nutty enough they might want to help the perp and hurt the victim.
Basically, give them oxytocin and they get all hot and bothered, and they’ll do something (the exactly wrong thing, of course) to lower tensions.
SD, whoa. Interesting.
Maybe oxytocin just distorts how we “catch” social signals.
Oxytocin seems to raise social awareness — there are intra-nasal oxytocin studies that show increased trust, but, on the other hand, increased envy.
Our unsubstantiated view is that this has something to do with calcium signaling, and neural synchrony (where neurons fire in synchrony, this indicates focusing on something, to oversimplify).
Here’s a link to PUBMED search, “intranasal oxytocin“
swivelchair,
One can imagine that after choir, petting kittens or having sex, borderlines get paranoid/defensive/nasty to people. That’s kinda sad.
I wonder if oxytocin gets narcissists acting more selfish, envious and Machiavellian. E.g. post-coitus, post-choir or post-kitten photos.
If you give a narcissist a gift (as in some experiments, to boost trust), I can imagine him thinking, “the jerks have finally recognized my greatness and given me a token – but just a stinking token – of appreciation. Of course, A, B, C and D have snubbed me, and E & F have it coming to them…” And then if you had the narcissist play a game (prisoners’ dilemma), he’d be less trusting than if you hadn’t given him something.
Another thought – I can easily imagine that if you gave a malignant narcissist oxytocin – e.g. this guy – http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/419/transcript – he’d be inclined to put together a group of guys to go punish the hell out of the perp, ignoring any wishes the victim had to be merciful to the perp.
That is, the oxytocin would increase the bonding and trust of the (normally paranoid and distrustful) leader and his crew, with bad consequences for everyone else.
SD, the reason I’m so late in responding to your comments is because you bring up good points that require actual thought, and that kind of thing takes us some time.
Ok. Good points SD (!)
Let us expound on this:
Oxytocin seems to be the ecstasy of social signals == that is, it enhances the experience. What social signals light up in a single individual may depend on that individual’s belts and hoses, (to now use an automotive analogy rather than a party drug analogy).
So, with additional oxytocin, a mother may be hyper aware of threats to the offspring; a tribe member may bond more closely with others in the tribe and pre-emptively attack other out-group tribes (not pointing any fingers, SD, just sayin).
As far as we can tell, oxytocin itself (the 9-amino acid protein), the oxytocin receptor (and some bind oxytocin better than others, and the expression patterns can be all over the place), and CD38 seem to be key players in all of this. Our own pet theory is that CD38, a cell-membrane protein that upregulates oxytocin expression and also has something to do with calcium signals, effects neural cell firing synchrony — electrical signals that mean you’re focused on something. So if your neurons in particular places are firing in synchrony, that means you’re paying attention to something. (Perhaps CD38 causes oxytocin release, rather than upregulation at the genetic level, we’d have to check on that).
So what do we find socially salient? Borderlines, narcissists, paranoids, etc. (and we’re not sure what these labels mean, really) presumably have expression patterns for oxytocin, the receptor, and CD38, as well as particular anatomical wiring, that would lead to preferences for social cues. So a narcissist may look for admiration, or seek a dopamine hit from destruction of detractors. A borderline may have “negative attributional bias” in conjuring up abandonment. A paranoid may believe everyone is out to get them. (And we’re being very cartoonish in these folk-psychology descriptions, and using this terminology for convenience only, as we think the time has come to get rid of all these labels and categorize by quantitative observable characteristics, rather than psychobabble).
And now, for the SD observations: after some oxytocin-upregulating event, particular people act in ways that comport with their particular wiring. So a “narcissist” with extra oxytocin would find salient “admiration” and “detractors”. (The destruction of detractors seems secondary to the need for a dopamine hit, but we suppose that would depend on the energy level of the particular narcissist). The “borderline” who has just pet a kitten would find “abandonment” particularly salient and presumably would act out in turn. The paranoid who has just has a rousing round of karaoke (and singing is correlated with increased blood oxytocin and decreased stress-cytokines), would have heightened negative-attributional bias.
The “This American Life” guy was textbook, thanks for the link.