Oxytocin enhances the experience of attachment security.
Repeated interactions between infant and caregiver result in either secure or insecure relationship attachment patterns, and insecure attachment may affect individual emotion-regulation and health. Given that oxytocin enhances social approach behavior in animals and humans, we hypothesized that oxytocin might also promote the subjective experience of attachment security in humans. Within a 3-week interval, 26 healthy male students classified with an insecure attachment pattern were invited twice to an experimental session. At the beginning of each experiment, a single dose of oxytocin or placebo was administered intranasally, using a double-blind, placebo-controlled within-subject design. In both conditions, subjects completed an attachment task based on the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP). Thirty-two AAP picture system presentations depicted attachment-related events (e.g. illness, solitude, separation, and loss), and were each accompanied by four prototypical phrases representing one secure and three insecure attachment categories. In the oxytocin condition, a significant proportion of these insecure subjects (N=18; 69%) increased in their rankings of the AAP prototypical "secure attachment" phrases and decreased in overall ranking of the "insecure attachment" phrases. In particular, there was a significant decrease in the number of subjects ranking the pictures with "insecure-preoccupied" phrases from the placebo to the oxytocin condition. We find that a single dose of intranasally administered oxytocin is sufficient to induce a significant increase in the experience of attachment security in insecurely attached adults.
Buchheim
Anna
A
Department of Psychology, Clinical Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Innrain 52, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria. anna.buchheim@uibk.ac.at
Heinrichs
Markus
M
George
Carol
C
Pokorny
Dan
D
Koops
Eva
E
Henningsen
Peter
P
O'Connor
Mary-Frances
MF
Gündel
Harald
H
D000281:Administration, Intranasal; D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009769:Object Attachment; D010121:Oxytocin / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000494:pharmacology*; D010465:Perception / Q000187:drug effects*
D010121:Oxytocin