Sun Rui, Vuillier Laura, Deakin Julia, Kogan Aleksandr
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Bournemouth University, United Kingdom.
Heliyon. 2020 Mar 26;6(3):e03540. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03540. eCollection 2020 Mar.
Studies have linked oxytocin to emotional theory of mind (eToM) - the ability to recognise and understand others' emotions. However, multiple replications have so far failed to reach a consistent result. Growing evidence suggests that oxytocin's positive effects on social-emotional tasks such as eToM are highly dependent on trait-level individual differences. In the present study, we theorised that socioeconomic status (SES) could influence oxytocin's impact on emotional mentalising processes. We tested our hypothesis in a double-blind between-subjects oxytocin nasal spray study on 147 Caucasian white male participants in the United Kingdom. In accordance with our hypothesis, we found that oxytocin (as compared to placebo) did boost emotional theory of mind, but only in people from low subjective SES backgrounds. Our results expand existing theory on how individual differences moderate oxytocin's role on social behaviours.
研究已将催产素与情绪心理理论（eToM）——识别和理解他人情绪的能力联系起来。然而，迄今为止的多次重复研究都未能得出一致的结果。越来越多的证据表明，催产素对诸如eToM等社会情感任务的积极影响高度依赖于特质水平的个体差异。在本研究中，我们提出理论，认为社会经济地位（SES）可能会影响催产素对情绪心理化过程的影响。我们在一项针对英国147名白人男性参与者的双盲受试者间催产素鼻喷雾剂研究中检验了我们的假设。与我们的假设一致，我们发现催产素（与安慰剂相比）确实增强了情绪心理理论，但仅在主观社会经济地位较低的人群中如此。我们的研究结果扩展了关于个体差异如何调节催产素在社会行为中作用的现有理论。
