School of Psychology and Beijing, Key Lab of Learning and Cognition, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China.
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences and Beijing, Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2020 Apr;114:104608. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2020.104608. Epub 2020 Feb 8.
Emotion perception, inferring the emotional state of another person, can be formalized as decision under uncertainty: another person's scowling face may indicate anger or concentration and the optimal inference is contingent on the decision consequences (payoff) and how likely real anger is encountered (base rate). Although emerging evidence suggests that the neuropeptide oxytocin influences human perception of emotional facial expressions, whether such effect relates to the alternated process of payoff or base rate still remains unclear. In addition, little is known about oxytocin's effect on metacognitive process involved in emotion perception. One hundred and twenty-two healthy male adults (sixty-two in Experiment 1 and sixty in Experiment 2, respectively) received 24 international units (IU) of intranasal oxytocin or placebo (between-subjects) in a randomized and double-blind study. We independently and systematically manipulated the payoff and base rate levels in an emotion categorization task and measured participants' response bias via categorization choice and metacognitive sensitivity via confidence report. Compared to the placebo group, oxytocin specifically induced a categorization bias under the payoff, but not base rate manipulation. In contrast, oxytocin had no effect on subjects' confidence rating, indicating that the metacognitive sensitivity can be dissociated from emotion perception. Our results pinpoint the specific role of oxytocin in payoff evaluation, but not target likelihood estimation and provide a potential theoretical framework to bridge oxytocin research in emotion perception, social cognition and value-based decisions.
情绪感知，即推断他人的情绪状态，可以形式化为不确定性下的决策：他人皱眉可能表示愤怒或专注，而最佳推断取决于决策结果（收益）和真实愤怒出现的可能性（基础率）。尽管新兴证据表明神经肽催产素会影响人类对情绪面部表情的感知，但这种影响是否与收益或基础率的交替过程有关尚不清楚。此外，关于催产素对情绪感知中元认知过程的影响知之甚少。122 名健康成年男性（实验 1 中 62 名，实验 2 中 60 名）分别接受 24 国际单位（IU）的鼻腔内催产素或安慰剂（组间），采用随机双盲研究。我们在情绪分类任务中独立系统地操纵收益和基础率水平，并通过分类选择测量参与者的反应偏差，通过信心报告测量元认知敏感性。与安慰剂组相比，催产素仅在收益操纵下引起分类偏差，但在基础率操纵下则没有。相比之下，催产素对被试的信心评分没有影响，表明元认知敏感性可以与情绪感知分离。我们的结果指出了催产素在收益评估中的特定作用，但不是目标可能性估计，并为将催产素在情绪感知、社会认知和基于价值的决策中的研究联系起来提供了一个潜在的理论框架。
