Trial reportEmotion (Washington, D.C.)2008
Effects of oxytocin and prosocial behavior on brain responses to direct and vicariously experienced pain.
Trial report in Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 3 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 84 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Computational Modeling of Oxytocin in the Regulation of Trust
The Effect of Intranasal Oxytocin on Pain Sensitivity and Threshold: A Randomized, Double Blinded, Crossover Volunteer Study
Effects of Oxytocin Administration on Social Influence Effects on Pain
Who cites it
84 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 253 citations in OpenAlex.
- Olympic combat sports and mental health in children and adolescents with disability: a systematic review of controlled trials.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Neurophysiological effects of acute oxytocin administration: systematic review and meta-analysis of placebo-controlled imaging studies.Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN · 2015Pooled it
- Alarm or emotion? intranasal oxytocin helps determine information conveyed by dog barks for adult male human listeners.BMC ecology and evolution · 2024Trial
- Intranasal oxytocin modulates the salience network in aging.NeuroImage · 2022Trial
- Oxytocin treatment attenuates amygdala activity in autism: a treatment-mechanism study with long-term follow-up.Translational psychiatry · 2020Trial
- Oxytocin induces long-lasting adaptations within amygdala circuitry in autism: a treatment-mechanism study with randomized placebo-controlled design.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Effects of oxytocin administration and conditioned oxytocin on brain activity: An fMRI study.PloS one · 2020Trial
- Low-dose intranasal oxytocin delivered with Breath Powered device modulates pupil diameter and amygdala activity: a randomized controlled pupillometry and fMRI study.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Intranasal oxytocin enhances intrinsic corticostriatal functional connectivity in women.Translational psychiatry · 2017Trial
- From painkiller to empathy killer: acetaminophen (paracetamol) reduces empathy for pain.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2016Trial
- Pain modulation by intranasal oxytocin and emotional picture viewing - a randomized double-blind fMRI study.Scientific reports · 2016Trial
- Oxytocin Effect on Collective Decision Making: A Randomized Placebo Controlled Study.PloS one · 2016Trial
- Effects of Oxytocin on Neural Response to Facial Expressions in Patients with Schizophrenia.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2015Trial
- Reduction of empathy for pain by placebo analgesia suggests functional equivalence of empathy and first-hand emotion experience.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2015Trial
- Intranasal administration of oxytocin increases compassion toward women.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2015Trial
- Vasopressin, but not oxytocin, increases empathic concern among individuals who received higher levels of paternal warmth: A randomized controlled trial.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2015Trial
- Efficacy of oxytocin administration early after psychotrauma in preventing the development of PTSD: study protocol of a randomized controlled trial.BMC psychiatry · 2014Trial
- No evidence that MDMA-induced enhancement of emotional empathy is related to peripheral oxytocin levels or 5-HT1a receptor activation.PloS one · 2014Trial
- Oxytocin selectively increases perceptions of harm for victims but not the desire to punish offenders of criminal offenses.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2013Trial
- Compassion meditation enhances empathic accuracy and related neural activity.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2013Trial
24 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In this study, we tested the validity of 2 popular assumptions about empathy: (a) empathy can be enhanced by oxytocin, a neuropeptide known to be crucial in affiliative behavior, and (b) individual differences in prosocial behavior are positively associated with empathic brain responses. To do so, we measured brain activity in a double-blind placebo-controlled study of 20 male participants either receiving painful stimulation to their own hand (self condition) or observing their female partner receiving painful stimulation to her hand (other condition). Prosocial behavior was measured using a monetary economic interaction game with which participants classified as prosocial (N = 12) or selfish (N = 6), depending on whether they cooperated with another player. Empathy-relevant brain activation (anterior insula) was neither enhanced by oxytocin nor positively associated with prosocial behavior. However, oxytocin reduced amygdala activation when participants received painful stimulation themselves (in the nonsocial condition). Surprisingly, this effect was driven by "selfish" participants. The results suggest that selfish individuals may not be as rational and unemotional as usually suggested, their actions being determined by their feeling anxious rather than by reason.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.