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Empathy is fundamental to social functioning. Although empathy involves sharing the emotional experience of another, research also highlights the importance of distinguishing the self from the other for optimal empathic responding. Without adequate self-other distinction, sharing another person's emotions can induce personal distress, a self-focused aversive reaction that often leads to withdrawing from the situation, rather than empathic concern, an other-oriented response of care. To date, no work has examined the psychological factors that might facilitate such self-other distinction in the context of empathy. We show that self-concept clarity (SCC), the extent to which the self is clearly defined, coherent, and temporally stable, predicts empathic responding. In Study 1 (N = 453, student sample), we show that low SCC is associated with more dispositional empathic personal distress and less empathic concern. We replicate these dispositional associations in Study 2 (N = 319, community sample) and, using Batson's classic Katie Banks paradigm, show that these associations hold in an actual empathy-inducing situation. Moreover, in Study 2, SCC predicts helping behavior, an effect that is mediated by feelings of personal distress and empathic concern. Finally, in Study 3 (N = 658, community sample), we again use the Katie Banks paradigm but in an experimental framework; consistent with Study 2, state SCC predicts empathic personal distress, empathic concern and helping behavior. Our findings highlight the importance of a clear, coherent and stable self-concept for empathy, and suggest that interventions aimed at increasing empathy may be futile in the presence of a weak and unclear sense of self. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Given the evolutionary importance of social ties for survival, humans are thought to have evolved psychobiological mechanisms to monitor and safeguard the status of their social bonds. At the psychological level, self-esteem is proposed to function as a gauge—‘sociometer’—reflecting one’s social belongingness status. At the biological level, endogenous opioids appear to be an important substrate for the hedonic signalling needed to regulate social behaviour. We investigated whether endogenous opioids may serve as the biological correlate of the sociometer. We administered 50 mg naltrexone (an opioid receptor antagonist) and placebo in a counterbalanced order to 26 male and female participants on two occasions ∼1 week apart. Participants reported lower levels of self-esteem—particularly self-liking—on the naltrexone (vs placebo) day. We also explored a potential behavioural consequence of naltrexone administration: attentional bias to accepting (smiling) faces—an early-stage perceptual process thought to maximize opportunities to restore social connection. Participants exhibited heightened attentional bias towards accepting faces on the naltrexone (vs placebo) day, which we interpret as an indicator of heightened social need under opioid receptor blockade. We discuss implications of these findings for understanding the neurobiological underpinnings of sociality as well as the relationship between adverse social conditions, low self-esteem and psychopathology.

Adverse effects following acute stress are traditionally thought to reflect functional impairments of central executive-dependent cognitive-control processes. However, recent evidence demonstrates that cognitive-control application is perceived as effortful and aversive, indicating that stress-related decrements in cognitive performance could denote decreased motivation to expend effort instead. To investigate this hypothesis, we tested 40 young, healthy individuals (20 female, 20 male) under both stress and control conditions in a 2-day study that had a within-subjects design. Cognitive-effort avoidance was assessed using the demand-selection task, in which participants chose between performing low-demand and high-demand variants of a task-switching paradigm. We found that acute stress indeed increased participants’ preference for less demanding behavior, whereas task-switching performance remained intact. Additional Bayesian and multiverse analyses confirmed the robustness of this effect. Our findings provide novel insights into how stressful experiences shape behavior by modulating our motivation to employ cognitive control.

Background Previously, oxytocin, a neuropeptide implicated in human social cognition and behavior, was shown to improve people’s ability to dynamically track another’s emotional state (“empathic accuracy”) specifically for less socially proficient individuals—i.e., healthy adults who score higher on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ); conversely, oxytocin had no effect on empathic accuracy for more socially proficient individuals, who performed well following oxytocin and placebo. Here, we aimed to replicate this finding and investigate the effects of oxytocin on empathic accuracy in women. To date, women have been seriously underrepresented in human oxytocin research, and it is not known whether the effects observed in male-only samples apply to women. Methods In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial, we administered 24 IU intranasal oxytocin (and, on a separate occasion, a matching placebo) to 31 men and 40 women and then measured empathic accuracy. AQ was assessed at baseline (prior to drug administration). Results Replicating a 2010 study by Bartz et al., oxytocin selectively improved empathic accuracy for men who scored higher on the AQ, whereas oxytocin did not benefit their lower AQ counterparts. Conversely, we found no effect of oxytocin on empathic accuracy for women (regardless of their AQ score). Conclusions In addition to speaking to reliability, this research is important given interest in using oxytocin to augment social functioning in some psychiatric disorders marked by social cognitive impairments. More generally, this research adds to our understanding of the biological systems that support human sociality and provides further evidence for the role of oxytocin therein.

Research suggests that endogenous opioids play a key role in the creation and maintenance of attachment bonds. Opioids acting at the μ-opioid receptor mediate reward and analgesia and are thus thought to underlie feelings of comfort and warmth experienced in the presence of close others. Disruption of μ-opioidergic activity increases separation distress in animals, suggesting that low opioid states may contribute to social pain. Accordingly, a functional μ-opioid receptor (OPRM1) polymorphism (C77G in primates, A118G in humans) affecting opioidergic signaling has been associated with separation distress and attachment behavior in nonhuman primates, and social pain sensitivity in humans. However, no research has examined the effects of this polymorphism on socioemotional experience, and specifically felt security, in daily interactions between romantic partners. Using an event-contingent recording method, members of 92 cohabiting romantic couples reported their felt security and quarrelsome behavior in daily interactions with each other for 20 days. Consistent with prior work, findings suggested that, relative to AA homozygotes, G allele carriers were more sensitive to their partners' self-reported quarrelsome behaviors (e.g., criticism), showing a greater decline in felt security when their partners reported higher quarrelsome behavior than usual. This is the first study to link variation in OPRM1 with felt security toward romantic partners in everyday social interactions. More generally, this research supports the theory that the attachment system incorporated evolutionarily primitive pain-regulating opioidergic pathways. We also discuss implications of this work for understanding of differential vulnerability to health risks posed by social stress.

The self has fascinated scholars for centuries. Although theory suggests that the self-concept (cognitive self-understanding) and bodily self (pre-reflective awareness of one’s body) are related, little work has examined this notion. To this end, in Study 1, participants reported on self-concept clarity (SCC) and completed the rubber hand illusion (RHI), a paradigm in which synchronous (vs. asynchronous) stimulation between a prosthetic hand and one’s own hand leads one to “embody” the prosthetic hand. Whereas participants were equally susceptible to the RHI during synchronous stroking, low-SCC individuals were more vulnerable to the illusion during asynchronous stroking, when the effect is unwarranted. Conceptually replicating and extending this finding, in Study 2, low-SCC individuals were more susceptible to the body-swap illusion—the impression that another person’s body is one’s own. These findings suggest that a clear sense of self implies clarity and stability of both the self-concept and the bodily self.

The human psyche is profoundly shaped by its cultural milieu; however, few studies have examined the dynamics of cultural influence in everyday life, especially when it comes to shaping people’s automatic, implicit attitudes. In this quasi-experimental field study, we investigated the effect of transient, but salient, cultural messages—the pop-cultural phenomenon of celebrity “fat-shaming”—on implicit anti-fat attitudes in the population. Adopting the “copycat suicide” methodology, we identified 20 fat-shaming events in the media; next, we obtained data from Project Implicit of participants who had completed the Weight Implicit Association Test from 2004 to 2015. As predicted, fat-shaming led to a spike in women’s (N=93,239) implicit anti-fat attitudes, with events of greater notoriety producing greater spikes. We also observed a general increase in implicit anti-fat attitudes over time. Although these passing comments may appear harmless, we show that feedback at the cultural level can be registered by the “body politic.”

Empathy, the ability to understand what others are feeling, is critical for social connection and navigating our social world. We investigated the effects of acute stress on cognitive empathy. Given that acute stress, and resulting increased glucocorticoid, triggers a shift in two large-scale brain networks, prioritizing the salience over the executive control network, we predicted that stress would facilitate empathic accuracy (EA). We also investigated the effect of gender/sex, given evidence of differential stress reactivity. Results from two independent studies (N= 267; 2,256 observations) showed that acute stress facilitated EA for men, an effect that was partly driven by their glucocorticoid response. Conversely, stress had no effect for women, who also slowed a blunted cortisol response. Moreover, exploratory analyses revealed that women taking oral contraceptives, in general, performed worse on the EA task than regularly cycling women. This research highlights the important, but complex, role of stress in cognitive empathy.

Given the significance of close relationships for human survival, it is thought that biological mechanisms evolved to support their initiation and maintenance. The neuropeptide oxytocin is one such candidate identified in non-human animal research. We investigated whether variation in CD38, a gene involved in oxytocin secretion and attachment behavior in rodents, predicts romantic relationship dynamics in daily life. Community couples participated in an event-contingent recording (ECR) study in which they reported their social behavior, perception of their partner’s behavior, and affect during their interactions with one another over a 20-day period; couples also completed various measures of relationship adjustment. Out of the 111 couples (N = 222 individuals) who provided either ECR and/or relationship adjustment information, we had information on CD38 for 118 individuals. As hypothesized, variation in rs3796863, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) identified in prior work, predicted communal behaviors (e.g., the expression of affection), as well as overall relationship adjustment, such that individuals with the CC (vs. AC/AA) allele reported higher levels of communal behavior across their daily interactions with their romantic partner, as well as higher levels of relationship adjustment. Individuals with the CC (vs. AC/AA) allele of rs3796863 also reported less negative affect and felt insecurity in their interactions with their romantic partner. Notably, we found that variation in the romantic partner's rs3796863 SNP was related to the person's outcomes, independent of the person’s rs3796863 genotype. These findings support the role of oxytocin in the interpersonal processes implicated in the maintenance of close relationships.

The Social Brain Hypothesis posits a quantitative relationship between primate neocortex size and social network size. However, the precise social-cognitive mechanisms that drive this relationship remain elusive. Social Working Memory (SWM)—the ability to actively maintain and manipulate social information—has been proposed as a potential mechanism, but, to date, has not been linked to network size. Here, we explicitly tested this association. In Study 1, 125 participants completed a SWM task and reported on their social networks. In Study 2, 25 participants underwent fMRI during the SWM task and reported on their social networks. As predicted, in Study 1, SWM performance was significantly associated with social network size and, specifically, “Sympathy Group” size (i.e., the size of one’s core friend group). In Study 2, we conceptually replicated and extended this effect by showing that neural activity in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex engaged during SWM (vs. non-social working memory) was associated with individual variation in Sympathy Group size. Taken together, these findings provide the first evidence that SWM constrains social network size, and suggest that SWM may be one social cognitive competency that underlies the Social Brain Hypothesis. In addition, whereas prior work investigating the Social Brain Hypothesis has largely focused on correlating brain structure size with social network size, to our knowledge, this is the first functional imaging evidence supporting the Social Brain Hypothesis.

Empathy is a cornerstone of human sociality. It has important consequences for our interpersonal relationships and for navigating our social world more generally. Although research has identified numerous psychological factors that can influence empathy, evidence suggests that empathy may also be rooted in our biology and, in particular, the gonadal steroid hormone testosterone. To date, much of the research linking testosterone and empathy has focused on the 2D:4D ratio (i.e., the ratio of the lengths of the index and ring fingers), and the results have been mixed. These mixed results, however, may be due to reliance on self-report measures to assess empathy, which can be vulnerable to self-presentation, as well as social-cultural norms about gender/sex differences in empathy. Moreover, although some have argued that digit ratio is an indicator of prenatal androgen exposure, the evidence for this to date is weak. Here, we aimed to follow up on this prior work, using a naturalistic empathic accuracy task in which participants dynamically track, in real-time, the emotional state of targets. We show that lower digit ratio (Study 1; N = 107) and higher circulating testosterone (Study 2; N = 76) are associated with poorer empathic accuracy performance; critically, these effects hold when controlling for sex/gender. In neither study, however, did we find effects on self-reported empathy. Our results highlight the limitations of self-report measures and support the notion that endogenous testosterone levels as well as 2D:4D ratio are related to key social-cognitive competencies like empathic accuracy.

It is a fundamental human need to secure and sustain a sense of social belonging. Previous research has shown that individuals who are lonely are more likely than people who are not lonely to attribute humanlike traits (e.g., free will) to nonhuman agents (e.g., an alarm clock that makes people get up by moving away from the sleeper), presumably in an attempt to fulfill unmet needs for belongingness. We directly replicated the association between loneliness and anthropomorphism in a larger sample ( N = 178); furthermore, we showed that reminding people of a close, supportive relationship reduces their tendency to anthropomorphize. This finding provides support for the idea that the need for belonging has causal effects on anthropomorphism. Last, we showed that attachment anxiety—characterized by intense desire for and preoccupation with closeness, fear of abandonment, and hypervigilance to social cues—was a stronger predictor of anthropomorphism than loneliness was. This finding helps clarify the mechanisms underlying anthropomorphism and supports the idea that anthropomorphism is a motivated process reflecting the active search for potential sources of connection.

Popularly hailed as the “love hormone,” oxytocin has emerged as a key variable in the regulation of human social cognition and behavior. In particular, research using intranasal oxytocin to pharmacologically manipulate the availability of oxytocin shows that oxytocin augmentation can promote a wide range of affiliative processes; however, evidence also shows null and even antisocial effects. Rather than random error to be eliminated, such variability may offer clues about the mechanisms by which oxytocin modulates human sociality. Three potential mechanisms—anxiety reduction, social salience, and affiliative motivation—are discussed, along with recent work showing how the affiliative-motivation hypothesis can simultaneously account for oxytocin’s pro- and antisocial effects. Appreciating oxytocin’s nuanced social effects is important for advancing our understanding of the neuroscience and psychology of affiliation.

Episodic memories can be modified when exposed to new and related information. This phenomenon, known as memory updating, is generally thought to be adaptive but can also lead to incorporating false information into a memory trace. Given the well-known effects of stress on episodic memory, we used a false information paradigm to investigate if acute stress during memory updating (i.e., post-learning stage) affected false memory formation. In a between-subject design, young healthy participants completed the initial phases of the misinformation experiment - they studied an event via a slideshow and then were exposed a related narrative that contained misleading information about that event. After, half of the participants were exposed to acute psychosocial stress and the other half completed a control task. Once stress levels returned to baseline, all of the participants completed the final phase of the experiment, which was a memory test for slideshow that included items containing true facts and misinformation. Participants in the stress condition showed a reduced misinformation effect and were better able to discriminate true from false information compared to control participants. This pattern of results held even when participants were tested on the same memory test after a multiple day delay, illustrating the long-lasting effects of stress on false memory formation specifically, and memory updating generally. We discuss how our results add to the understanding of the time-dependent factors that moderate stress effects on memory, and speculate how stress effects on memory updating can be positive, by limiting intrusions into encoded events, but also negative, by limiting the ability to integrate information with other concepts, harming memory generalization.

Although acute psychosocial stress can impact autobiographical memory retrieval, the nature of this effect is not entirely clear. One reason for this ambiguity is because stress can have opposing effects on the different stages of autobiographical memory retrieval. We addressed this issue by testing how acute stress affects three stages of the autobiographical memory retrieval – accessing, recollecting and reconsolidating a memory. We also investigate the influence of emotion valence on this effect. In a between-subjects design, participants were first exposed to an acute psychosocial stressor or a control task. Next, the participants were shown positive, negative or neutral retrieval cues and asked to access and describe autobiographical memories. After a three to four day delay, participants returned for a second session in which they described these autobiographical memories. During initial retrieval, stressed participants were slower to access memories than were control participants; moreover, cortisol levels were positively associated with response times to access positively-cued memories. There were no effects of stress on the amount of details used to describe memories during initial retrieval, but stress did influence memory detail during session two. During session two, stressed participants recovered significantly more details, particularly emotional ones, from the remembered events than control participants. Our results indicate that the presence of stress impairs the ability to access consolidated autobiographical memories; moreover, although stress has no effect on memory recollection, stress alters how recollected experiences are reconsolidated back into memory traces.

Oxytocin promotes prosocial behavior, especially in those individuals who are low in affiliation (e.g., avoidantly attached individuals), but can exacerbate interpersonal insecurities in those preoccupied with closeness (e.g., anxiously attached individuals). One explanation for these opposing observations is that oxytocin induces a communal, other-orientation. Becoming more other oriented should help those people who focus on the self to the exclusion of others, but could be detrimental to those who are other focused but have little sense of an agentic self. Using a within-subjects design, we administered intranasal oxytocin and placebo to 40 males and measured their agency (self-orientation) and communion (other-orientation). Oxytocin produced a slight increase in communion for the average participant; however, as predicted, avoidantly attached individuals were especially likely to perceive themselves as more communal (“kind,” “warm,” “gentle,” etc.) after receiving oxytocin than after receiving the placebo. There was no main effect of oxytocin on agency for the average participant; however, anxiously attached individuals showed a selective decrease in agency (“independent,” “self-confident,” etc.) following administration of oxytocin. These data help explain the complex social effects of oxytocin.

It is well-known that the neuropeptide oxytocin plays a critical role regulating the formation of adult-adult pairbonds in non-human animals, and recent work suggests oxytocin may similarly play an important role in romantic bonding in humans. Specifically, endogenous oxytocin is predictive of a host of relationship-enhancing behaviors, relationship quality, and even relationship survival amongst newly dating couples. This work suggests that oxytocin can buffer romantic relationships, possibly during especially difficult transition periods. One challenge that many couples face is the birth of a child: a joyous event, but one that is recognized as a major life stressor nonetheless. We aimed to investigate whether maternal oxytocin buffers the parent-partner relationship during the perinatal transition period. To test this, we analyzed data from a longitudinal study of child-bearing women (N = 269) in which endogenous oxytocin was measured in blood plasma during the 1st and 3rd trimesters and at 7-9 weeks postpartum; relationship status was assessed at the outset and 2.5 years postpartum. As predicted, lower maternal oxytocin was associated with greater risk for relationship dissolution by the time the child was a toddler (p < .05). These findings directly replicate research showing that endogenous oxytocin predicts relationship survival in dating couples, but in a novel interpersonal context. That said, only a very small number (N = 7) of couples separated; this, of course, is unsurprising given that the perinatal transition period is not a time when couples typically choose to terminate their relationship. Nonetheless, these findings must be considered preliminary until replicated in future research.

Does oxytocin influence intimate partner violence (IPV)? Clues from prior research suggest that oxytocin increases prosocial behavior, but this effect is reversed among people with aggressive tendencies or in situations involving defensive aggression. Animal research also indicates that oxytocin plays a central role in defensive maternal aggression (i.e., protecting pups from intruders). Among highly aggressive people, a boost of oxytocin may cause them to use aggression toward close others as a means of maintaining their relationship. Adopting an interactionist approach, we predicted that oxytocin would increase IPV inclinations, but this effect would be limited to people high in trait physical aggression. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subject experiment, participants varying in trait physical aggression received either 24 international unit of oxytocin or a placebo. Following two provocation tasks, participants rated the probability that they would engage in various aggressive behaviors (e.g., slapping, throwing an object that could hurt) toward a romantic partner. Oxytocin increased IPV inclinations, but this effect was limited to participants prone to physical aggression. These data offer the first evidence that IPV inclinations have a biological basis in a combination of oxytocin and trait physical aggressiveness.

SummaryIn this review we summarize the results and conclusions of five studies as presented in a symposium at the 42nd annual meeting of the International Society for Psychoneuroendocrinology, in New York in September 2012. Oxytocin administration has received increasing attention for its role in promoting positive social behavior and stress regulation, and its potential as a therapeutic intervention for addressing various aspects of psychiatric disorders. However, it has been noted that the observed effects are not uniformly beneficial. In this paper we present five new studies each concluding that contextual and interindividual factors moderate the effects of oxytocin, as well as peripheral oxytocin levels. These findings are in accordance with the recent idea that oxytocin administration may increase sensitivity to social salience cues and that the interpretation of these cues may be influenced by contextual (i.e. presence of a stranger versus friend) or interindividual factors (i.e. sex, attachment style, or the presence of psychiatric symptoms). When social cues in the environment are interpreted as “safe” oxytocin may promote prosociality but when the social cues are interpreted as “unsafe” oxytocin may promote more defensive and, in effect, “anti-social” emotions and behaviors. Likewise, oxytocin appears to promote such agonistic tendencies in individuals who are chronically pre-disposed to view the social milieu in uncertain and/or in negative terms (e.g., those with borderline personality disorder, severe attachment anxiety and/or childhood maltreatment). In all, these studies in pre-clinical animal, healthy humans and patients samples further reinforce the importance of considering both contextual and interindividual factors when trying to understand the role of oxytocin as a biological substrate underlying social bonding and stress regulatory processes and when studying the effects of oxytocin administration in particular in patients with (increased risk for) psychiatric disorders.

Objective Humans face an enduring conflict between desires to affiliate with others but to protect the self; effective social functioning often requires reconciling the resulting ambivalence between these motives. Attachment anxiety is characterized by chronically heightened concerns about affiliation and self-protection; we investigated how anxious individuals’ chronic relational ambivalence affects interpersonal behavior. Method We used the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Assurance Game to examine how the ambivalence associated with attachment anxiety affects pro-social behavior, comparing chronic attachment anxiety with both chronic (Study 1; N = 94) and contextually activated (Study 2; N = 56) security. Results Chronic attachment anxiety was associated with ambivalent behavior in the social dilemma games. Specifically, the chronically anxious were mistrustfully inconsistent in their strategic choices and took more time to make these choices. However, priming the chronically anxious with attachment security decreased ambivalence by promoting more fluent cooperative behavior. Conclusions To our knowledge, these are the first studies to examine the effect of the anxiously attached's chronic relational ambivalence on pro-social behavior. These findings illustrate that the simultaneous activation of affiliation and self-protection can have interpersonal consequences, increasing mistrust and hesitance. Importantly, however, we were able to attenuate these effects by priming felt security.

It is a fundamental human need to secure and sustain a sense of social belonging. Previous research has shown that individuals who are lonely are more likely than people who are not lonely to attribute humanlike traits (e.g., free will) to nonhuman agents (e.g., an alarm clock that makes people get up by moving away from the sleeper), presumably in an attempt to fulfill unmet needs for belongingness. We directly replicated the association between loneliness and anthropomorphism in a larger sample ( N = 178); furthermore, we showed that reminding people of a close, supportive relationship reduces their tendency to anthropomorphize. This finding provides support for the idea that the need for belonging has causal effects on anthropomorphism. Last, we showed that attachment anxiety-characterized by intense desire for and preoccupation with closeness, fear of abandonment, and hypervigilance to social cues-was a stronger predictor of anthropomorphism than loneliness was. This finding helps clarify the mechanisms underlying anthropomorphism and supports the idea that anthropomorphism is a motivated process reflecting the active search for potential sources of connection.

Oxytocin has known stress-reducing and attachment-enhancing effects. We thus hypothesized that oxytocin would attenuate emotional and hormonal responses to stress in borderline personality disorder (BPD). Fourteen BPD and 13 healthy control (HC) adults received 40 IU intranasal oxytocin or placebo in double-blind randomized order followed by the Trier Social Stress Test. Subjective dysphoria (Profile of Mood Changes) and plasma cortisol levels were measured. Childhood trauma history, attachment style, and self-esteem were also rated. A significant "Group × Drug × Time" interaction effect for dysphoria (p=.04) reflected a proportionately greater attenuation of stress-induced dysphoria in the BPD group after oxytocin administration. Additionally, a marginally significant "Group × Drug" interaction effect for cortisol (p=.10) reflected a tendency toward greater attenuation of the stress-induced cortisol surge in the BPD group after oxytocin administration. In the combined sample, the oxytocin-placebo difference in the emotional stress reactivity was significantly predicted by childhood trauma alone (p=.037) and combined with self-esteem (p=.030), whereas the oxytocin-placebo difference in cortisol stress reactivity was predicted only by insecure attachment (p=.013). Results suggest that oxytocin may have a beneficial impact on emotional regulation in BPD, which merits further investigation and could have important treatment implications.

We investigated the effects of intranasal oxytocin (OXT) on trust and cooperation in borderline personality disorder (BPD), a disorder marked by interpersonal instability and difficulties with cooperation. Although studies in healthy adults show that intranasal OXT increases trust, individuals with BPD may show an altered response to exogenous OXT because the effects of OXT on trust and pro-social behavior may vary depending on the relationship representations and expectations people possess and/or altered OXT system functioning in BPD. BPD and control participants received intranasal OXT and played a social dilemma game with a partner. Results showed that OXT produced divergent effects in BPD participants, decreasing trust and the likelihood of cooperative responses. Additional analyses focusing on individual differences in attachment anxiety and avoidance across BPD and control participants indicate that these divergent effects were driven by the anxiously attached, rejection-sensitive participants. These data suggest that OXT does not uniformly facilitate trust and pro-social behavior in humans; indeed, OXT may impede trust and pro-social behavior depending on chronic interpersonal insecurities, and/or possible neurochemical differences in the OXT system. Although popularly dubbed the ‘hormone of love’, these data suggest a more circumspect answer to the question of who will benefit from OXT.

Although the infant–caregiver attachment bond is critical to survival, little is known about the biological mechanisms supporting attachment representations in humans. Oxytocin plays a key role in attachment bond formation and maintenance in animals and thus could be expected to affect attachment representations in humans. To investigate this possibility, we administered 24 IU intranasal oxytocin to healthy male adults in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover designed study and then assessed memories of childhood maternal care and closeness—two features of the attachment bond. We found that the effects of oxytocin were moderated by the attachment representations people possess, with less anxiously attached individuals remembering their mother as more caring and close after oxytocin (vs. placebo) but more anxiously attached individuals remembering their mother as less caring and close after oxytocin (vs. placebo). These data contrast with the popular notion that oxytocin has broad positive effects on social perception and are more consistent with the animal literature, which emphasizes oxytocin's role in encoding social memories and linking those memories to the reward value of the social stimulus.

Close relationships characterized by attachment anxiety can result in an approach-avoidance conflict, making it difficult to follow the communal script. This research investigated relationship-specific attachment and adherence to communal norms in established close relationships. Participants were randomly assigned to think about a secure, avoidant, or anxious-ambivalent relationship, and visualized scenarios involving the receipt/payment of social commodities. Behavioral intentions, affect, and reciprocation timing and importance were assessed. Those in secure relationships followed the communal script, and reported comfort with their own and their partner’s use of communal norms, whereas those in avoidant relationships used exchange norms and reported distress when their partner used communal norms. Those who felt anxious-ambivalent inconsistently adhered to the communal script: Although they intended to act communal (offer help), they were vigilant about reciprocation (a communal script violation). Moreover, when their partner used communal norms (did a favor), they said they would feel happy but ironically, anxious.

Background Oxytocin dysfunction might contribute to the development of social deficits in autism, a core symptom domain and potential target for intervention. This study explored the effect of intravenous oxytocin administration on the retention of social information in autism. Methods Oxytocin and placebo challenges were administered to 15 adult subjects diagnosed with autism or Asperger’s disorder, and comprehension of affective speech (happy, indifferent, angry, and sad) in neutral content sentences was tested. Results All subjects showed improvements in affective speech comprehension from pre- to post-infusion; however, whereas those who received placebo first tended to revert to baseline after a delay, those who received oxytocin first retained the ability to accurately assign emotional significance to speech intonation on the speech comprehension task. Conclusions These results are consistent with studies linking oxytocin to social recognition in rodents as well as studies linking oxytocin to prosocial behavior in humans and suggest that oxytocin might facilitate social information processing in those with autism. These findings also provide preliminary support for the use of oxytocin in the treatment of autism.

Attachment working models provide the cognitive structure by which individuals seek to satisfy attachment-relevant goals. In this chapter, we examine working models, drawing on social cognitive principles and an expectancy-value framework of motivation to better understand the normative processes involved in the formation and maintenance of adult attachment. Specifically, we consider the cognitive dynamics of working models by examining attachment scripts, consisting of outcome expectancies and associated strategies as represented in associative networks, and showing spreading activation dynamics that reveal implicit expectancies. We also highlight work on general versus relationship-specific models, and how this work informs our understanding of attachment stability and change, as well as what it reveals about normative processes. Our discussion of value focuses on the subjective value an individual attaches to attachment-related communal goals, and how such valuing interacts with expectancies to influence communal goal striving. We highlight several recent studies involving heightened valuing of interpersonal connection via situational factors (e.g., the presence of an available partner) as well as biological factors (e.g., manipulation of the neurohormone oxytocin), and examine how such activation influences, and is influenced by, expectancies to impact such fundamental attachment-related processes as willingness to initiate a relationship, or persevere in the face of interpersonal uncertainty. We conclude by considering alternative ways in which expectancies and value may interact to impact attachment dynamics and discuss directions for future work.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is classified as an anxiety disorder in the DSM-IV-TR [American Psychiatric Association, 2000. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, Fourth ed., rev. Washington, DC: Author]; however, the notion of a spectrum of obsessive-compulsive (OC) related disorders that is comprised of such disparate disorders as OCD, body dysmorphic disorder, certain eating disorders, pathological gambling, and autism, is gaining acceptance. The fact that these disorders share obsessive-compulsive features and evidence similarities in patient characteristics, course, comorbidity, neurobiology, and treatment response raises the question of whether OCD is best conceptualized as an anxiety or an OC spectrum disorder. This article reviews evidence from comorbidity and family studies, as well as biological evidence related to neurocircuitry, neurotransmitter function, and pharmacologic treatment response that bear on this question. The implications of removing OCD from the anxiety disorders category and moving it to an OC spectrum disorders category, as is being proposed for the DSM-V, is discussed.

Two studies investigated how contextually activating attachment relationships influences the working self-concept in terms of agency and communion. In Study 1, 245 participants were primed with a secure, avoidant, or anxious-ambivalent relationship and the implicit accessibility of agency and communion was assessed using word fragments. Activating a secure relationship increased the accessibility of communion, whereas activating an anxious-ambivalent relationship increased the accessibility of agency. In Study 2, 123 participants were primed with a secure, preoccupied, avoidant-dismissive, or avoidant-fearful relationship and explicit self-perceptions of agency and communion traits were assessed using the Extended Personality Attributes Questionnaire (EPAQ). Gender interacted with the attachment prime, such that men primed with a secure relationship reported higher communion than did men primed with an avoidant (dis-missive or fearful) relationship, whereas women primed with an anxious (preoccupied or fearful) relationship reported higher agency than did women primed with a secure relationship.

Les auteurs se sont penches sur les effets des attitudes ancrees deliberatives par opposition a la mises en pratique sur la validite de prediction des construits d'une relation. Des etudiants qui sortaientensemble et qui anticipaient la transition de l'universite au milieu de travail ont aborde la question d'accroitre leur engagement ou ont pense a des facons de maintenir leurs relations apres l'obtention de leur diplome. Supportant l'hypothese, cette manipulation de l'attitude ancree a interagi avec les evaluations subsequentes de la proximite de la relation et l'engagement percu du partenaire pour predire l'etat de la relation six mois plus tard. Les evaluations posees par les personnes dans un etat d'attitude deliberative etaient plus fermement associees a la survie de la relation que les evaluations semblables faites par les personnes dont l'attitude etait celle de mise en pratique. Les evaluations des relations deliberatives n'etaient positives que si leur relation suivait une trajectoire heureuse, tandis que les evaluations des personnes dont l'attitude ancree etait celle de mise en pratique, etaient positives peu importe si leurs relations suivaient une trajectoire vouee au succes ou a l'echec.

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. Empathy for another’s physical pain has been demonstrated in humans [1] and mice [2]; in both species, empathy is stronger between familiars. Stress levels in stranger dyads are higher than in cagemate dyads or isolated mice [2, 3], suggesting that stress might be responsible for the absence of empathy for the pain of strangers. We show here that blockade of glucocorticoid synthesis or receptors for adrenal stress hormones elicits the expression of emotional contagion (a form of empathy) in strangers of both species. Mice and undergraduates were tested for sensitivity to noxious stimulation alone and/or together (dyads). In familiar, but not stranger, pairs, dyadic testing was associated with increased pain behaviors or ratings compared to isolated testing. Pharmacological blockade of glucocorticoid synthesis or glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptors enabled the expression of emotional contagion of pain in mouse and human stranger dyads, as did a shared gaming experience (the video game Rock Band) in human strangers. Our results demonstrate that emotional contagion is prevented, in an evolutionarily conserved manner, by the stress of a social interaction with an unfamiliar conspecific and can be evoked by blocking the endocrine stress response.

Interpersonal dysfunction contributes to significant disability in the schizophrenia spectrum. Schizotypal Personality Disorder (SPD) is a schizophrenia-related personality demonstrating social cognitive impairment in the absence of frank psychosis. Past research indicates that cognitive dysfunction or schizotypy may account for social cognitive dysfunction in this population. We tested SPD subjects and healthy controls on the Empathic Accuracy (EA) paradigm and the Reading of the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), assessing the impact of EA on social support. We also explored whether EA differences could be explained by intelligence, working memory, trait empathy, or attachment avoidance. SPD subjects did not differ from controls in RMET, but demonstrated lower EA during negative valence videos, associated with lower social support. Dynamic, multimodal EA paradigms may be more effective at capturing interpersonal dysfunction than static image tasks such as RMET. Schizotypal severity, trait empathy, and cognitive dysfunction did not account for empathic dysfunction in SPD, although attachment avoidance is related to empathic differences. Empathic dysfunction for negative affect contributes to decreased social support in the schizophrenia spectrum. Future research may shed further light on potential links between attachment avoidance, empathic dysfunction, and social support.

Background There are no effective medications for the treatment of social cognition/function deficits in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and adult intervention literature in this area is sparse. Emerging data from animal models and genetic association studies as well as early, single-dose intervention studies suggest that the oxytocin system may be a potential therapeutic target for social cognition/function deficits in ASD. The primary aim of this study was to examine the safety/therapeutic effects of intranasal oxytocin versus placebo in adults with ASD, with respect to the two core symptom domains of social cognition/functioning and repetitive behaviors. Methods This was a pilot, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel design trial of intranasal oxytocin versus placebo in 19 adults with ASD (16 males; 33.20 ± 13.29 years). Subjects were randomized to 24 IU intranasal oxytocin or placebo in the morning and afternoon for 6 weeks. Measures of social function/cognition (the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy) and repetitive behaviors (Repetitive Behavior Scale Revised) were administered. Secondary measures included the Social Responsiveness Scale, Reading-the-Mind-in-the-Eyes Test and the Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale – compulsion subscale and quality of life (World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire – emotional/social subscales). Full-information maximum-likelihood parameter estimates were obtained and tested using mixed-effects regression analyses. Results Although no significant changes were detected in the primary outcome measures after correcting for baseline differences, results suggested improvements after 6 weeks in measures of social cognition (Reading-the-Mind-in-the-Eyes Test, p = 0.002, d = 1.2), and quality of life (World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire – emotion, p = 0.031, d = 0.84), both secondary measures. Oxytocin was well tolerated and no serious adverse effects were reported. Conclusions This pilot study suggests that there is therapeutic potential to daily administration of intranasal oxytocin in adults with ASD and that larger and longer studies are warranted. Trial registration NCT00490802

Humans face an enduring conflict between desires to affiliate with others but to protect the self; effective social functioning often requires reconciling the resulting ambivalence between these motives. Attachment anxiety is characterized by chronically heightened concerns about affiliation and self-protection; we investigated how anxious individuals' chronic relational ambivalence affects interpersonal behavior.We used the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Assurance Game to examine how the ambivalence associated with attachment anxiety affects pro-social behavior, comparing chronic attachment anxiety with both chronic (Study 1; N = 94) and contextually activated (Study 2; N = 56) security.Chronic attachment anxiety was associated with ambivalent behavior in the social dilemma games. Specifically, the chronically anxious were mistrustfully inconsistent in their strategic choices and took more time to make these choices. However, priming the chronically anxious with attachment security decreased ambivalence by promoting more fluent cooperative behavior.To our knowledge, these are the first studies to examine the effect of the anxiously attached's chronic relational ambivalence on pro-social behavior. These findings illustrate that the simultaneous activation of affiliation and self-protection can have interpersonal consequences, increasing mistrust and hesitance. Importantly, however, we were able to attenuate these effects by priming felt security.

Building on animal research, the past decade has witnessed a surge of interest in the effects of oxytocin on social cognition and prosocial behavior in humans. This work has generated considerable excitement about identifying the neurochemical underpinnings of sociality in humans, and discovering compounds to treat social functioning deficits. Inspection of the literature, however, reveals that the effects of oxytocin in the social domain are often weak and/or inconsistent. We propose that this literature can be informed by an interactionist approach in which the effects of oxytocin are constrained by features of situations and/or individuals. We show how this approach can improve understanding of extant research, suggest novel mechanisms through which oxytocin might operate, and refine predictions about oxytocin pharmacotherapy.

t o H uman beings have a fundamental need to belong (1), and it is well-known that social isolation can be detrimental to mental and physical well-being (2– 4). Despite the well-esablished connection between close relationships and heath, we re only beginning to understand the biological factors that might ediate this relationship in humans. The burgeoning field of social euroscience and, in particular, the use of pharmacological interentions in conjunction with cognitive and/or behavioral paraigms has produced a number of intriguing neurochemical candiates, including the neuropeptide oxytocin (5) as well as some less bvious contenders like proinflammatory cytokines (6) and, finally, serotonin. With respect to the latter, research has shown that serotonin has been associated with impulsivity, aggression (specifically, reactive aggression), social isolation, dominance, quarrelsomeness, and heightened reactivity to emotional events (see Crockett [7] for review), but a new study by Bilderbeck et al. (8), published in this issue of Biological Psychiatry, suggests that serotonin might also modulate perceptions of close relationships. Bilderbeck et al. used a well-established acute tryptophan depletion procedure to look at the effects of central serotonin levels on cognitive appraisals of close personal relationships. Specifically, male and female healthy volunteers ingested an amino acid drink with tryptophan (T ) (n 22) or without tryptophan (T ) (n 19) in this between-subject, double-blind study. Approximately five hours after ingesting the amino acid drink, participants completed a novel “Couples Appraisal Task” in which they viewed photographs of heterosexual couples (a mixture of real and posed) who were either: 1) standing apart, or 2) making affiliative gestures (e.g., putting their arms around each other or holding hands). Participants then rated the couples in terms of 10 descriptors that were thought to reflect “perceived stability of romantic relationships” (e.g., “committed,” “intimate,” “trusting,” “supportive”) as well as in terms of relative dominance of the partners, their independence, and their ability to solve conflicts. Results showed a significant effect of tryptophan treatment on relationship appraisals; post hoc analyses revealed that tryptophan specifically altered intimacy and romance judgments but had no effect on the other relationship descriptors. One should be cautious when interpreting these observations, given the novelty of the task and that norms have not been established. Nevertheless, it is interesting to think about the selective effects of tryptophan on intimacy and what that might mean about potential mechanisms. Definitions of “intimate” include “associated in close personal relations,” “very private/closely personal,” “warmly cozy,” and “inmost/deep within.” In the context of close relationships, Collins and Stroufe (9) nicely illustrate the complex emotional, motivational, and behavioral aspects of intimacy