title: Generous to whom? The influence of oxytocin on social discounting.
abstract: Oxytocin is thought to play an essential role in pro-social behaviors, such as generosity and altruism, in humans. Yet, most research in humans that demonstrated the pro-social effect of oxytocin had participants interact with partners who were total strangers to them. In real life, however, people often interact with others varying in social relatedness with them (a concept known as social distance), ranging from their parents to total strangers. Here we employed the social-discounting framework to investigate whether the effect of oxytocin on prosociality depends on the social distance between the participants and their interaction partners. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment (n=172 participants), we measured the amount of money participants were willing to forgo to another person as a function of social distance. We found that oxytocin administration selectively enhanced amount of money forgone toward total strangers, as opposed to someone closer to participants, suggesting that social distance constrained the pro-social effect of oxytocin.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Neurobiology/Ageing Programme and Institute for Neurotechnology (SINAPSE), Center for Life Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Narun
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Pornpattananangkul
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology and Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Junfeng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Qiaoyu
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Bing Cai
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Kok
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Neurobiology/Ageing Programme and Institute for Neurotechnology (SINAPSE), Center for Life Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore; School of Psychology and Center for Studies of Psychological Application, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China. Electronic address: psyyr@nus.edu.sg.
authors.forename: Rongjun
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yu
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000533:Altruism; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010121:Oxytocin / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D012929:Psychological Distance; D012919:Social Behavior; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010121:Oxytocin
keywords: Affiliative motivation; Altruism; Generosity; Oxytocin; Prosociality; Social discounting