title: Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism.
abstract: Human ethnocentrism--the tendency to view one's group as centrally important and superior to other groups--creates intergroup bias that fuels prejudice, xenophobia, and intergroup violence. Grounded in the idea that ethnocentrism also facilitates within-group trust, cooperation, and coordination, we conjecture that ethnocentrism may be modulated by brain oxytocin, a peptide shown to promote cooperation among in-group members. In double-blind, placebo-controlled designs, males self-administered oxytocin or placebo and privately performed computer-guided tasks to gauge different manifestations of ethnocentric in-group favoritism as well as out-group derogation. Experiments 1 and 2 used the Implicit Association Test to assess in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. Experiment 3 used the infrahumanization task to assess the extent to which humans ascribe secondary, uniquely human emotions to their in-group and to an out-group. Experiments 4 and 5 confronted participants with the option to save the life of a larger collective by sacrificing one individual, nominated as in-group or as out-group. Results show that oxytocin creates intergroup bias because oxytocin motivates in-group favoritism and, to a lesser extent, out-group derogation. These findings call into question the view of oxytocin as an indiscriminate "love drug" or "cuddle chemical" and suggest that oxytocin has a role in the emergence of intergroup conflict and violence.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, 1018 WB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. c.k.w.dedreu@uva.nl
authors.forename: Carsten K W
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: De Dreu
authors.forename: Lindred L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Greer
authors.forename: Gerben A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Van Kleef
authors.forename: Shaul
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shalvi
authors.forename: Michel J J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Handgraaf
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000187:drug effects*; D017004:Codependency, Psychological / Q000187:drug effects; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D004644:Emotions / Q000187:drug effects; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010121:Oxytocin / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000494:pharmacology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010121:Oxytocin