Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, and Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS-FRS), Belgium.
Biol Psychol. 2011 Jul;87(3):401-6. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.05.005. Epub 2011 Jun 17.
Originally known for its role in labor and lactation, oxytocin (OT) has recently been shown to facilitate social behaviour by improving socio-emotional abilities. However, whether OT is equally beneficial to all people, or whether is it particularly beneficial to less emotionally/socially competent (i.e., high alexithymia) individuals it is not yet known. We investigated the effects of OT on individuals of varying socio-emotional ability by randomly assigning sixty male students to receive either oxytocin (OT) or a placebo (PL), and had them perform the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RMET). Results showed that whereas the performance of lower alexithymia individuals was equally good in both OT and PL conditions, the performance of higher alexithymia people was better under OT than PL. These results suggest that the effects of OT are not only context-dependent-as recently shown-but also personality dependent. They also provide new insights into the remediation of socio-emotional deficits.
最初因其在分娩和哺乳中的作用而闻名，催产素（OT）最近被证明通过提高社会情感能力来促进社交行为。然而，OT 是否对所有人都同样有益，或者它是否对情感/社交能力较低（即高述情障碍）的个体特别有益，目前尚不清楚。我们通过随机分配六十名男性学生接受催产素（OT）或安慰剂（PL），并让他们进行“读心测试”（RMET），来研究 OT 对不同社会情感能力个体的影响。结果表明，低述情障碍个体在 OT 和 PL 两种条件下的表现同样出色，而高述情障碍个体在 OT 条件下的表现优于 PL 条件下。这些结果表明，OT 的作用不仅取决于上下文——如最近所显示的——还取决于个性。它们还为矫正社会情感缺陷提供了新的见解。
