Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Psychol Sci. 2013 Aug;24(8):1573-8. doi: 10.1177/0956797612472682. Epub 2013 Jun 4.
Oxytocin attenuates responses to stress and threat (e.g., by fostering social approach in animals), but direct investigations of whether the hormone also facilitates approach-related social behaviors in humans are lacking. To assess approach-avoidance tendencies, we had participants respond to images of happy and angry faces with direct or averted gaze by either pulling a joystick toward themselves (approach) or pushing it away from themselves (avoidance). When given a placebo, participants' action tendencies were typical, with happy faces eliciting approach responses and angry faces eliciting avoidance responses. However, 24 IU of oxytocin moderated these tendencies, with the inclination to approach angry faces with direct gaze being negatively related to social anxiety. The results demonstrate that oxytocin facilitates approach in humans in response to social threat, which verifies its anxiolytic potential. Moreover, they underscore the moderating role of dispositional factors reported in endocrine research and their therapeutic implications.
催产素可减轻对压力和威胁的反应（例如，通过促进动物的社交接近），但直接研究这种激素是否也能促进人类与接近相关的社交行为还很缺乏。为了评估接近-回避倾向，我们让参与者通过直接或回避的目光对快乐和愤怒的面孔做出反应，方法是将操纵杆拉向自己（接近）或推离自己（回避）。当给予安慰剂时，参与者的动作倾向是典型的，快乐的面孔会引起接近反应，愤怒的面孔会引起回避反应。然而，24IU 的催产素调节了这些倾向，用直接注视面对愤怒面孔的接近倾向与社交焦虑呈负相关。研究结果表明，催产素促进了人类对社交威胁的反应中的接近，验证了其抗焦虑的潜力。此外，它们强调了内分泌研究中报告的特质因素的调节作用及其治疗意义。
