Trial reportSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2017
Oxytocin promotes altruistic punishment.
Trial report in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 26 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trial
- Enhancement in dopamine reduces generous behaviour in women.PloS one · 2019Trial
- Oxytocin-induced modulation of explicit and implicit visual perspective taking.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- How does oxytocin modulate human behavior?Molecular psychiatry · 2025Review
- The OXTR rs53576 impacts moral permissibility of attempted but failed harms in populations of students and prisoners.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2022Article
- Oxytocin and the Punitive Hub-Dynamic Spread of Cooperation in Human Social Networks.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Oxytocin has 'tend-and-defend' functionality in group conflict across social vertebrates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Oxytocin Facilitates Self-Serving Rather Than Altruistic Tendencies in Competitive Social Interactions Via Orbitofrontal Cortex.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2019Article
- Oxytocin modulates social value representations in the amygdala.Nature neuroscience · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The role of neuromodulators in the enforcement of cooperation is still not well understood. Here, we provide evidence that intranasal applied oxytocin, an important hormone for modulating social behavior, enhances the inclination to sanction free-riders in a social dilemma situation. Contrary to the notion of oxytocin being a pro-social hormone, we found that participants treated with oxytocin exhibited an amplification of self-reported negative social emotions such as anger towards free-riders, ultimately resulting in higher magnitude and frequency of punishment of free-riders compared to placebo. Furthermore, we found initial evidence that oxytocin contributes to the positive effects of a punishment institution by rendering cooperation preferable in the oxytocin condition for even the most selfish players when punishment was available. Together, these findings imply that the neural circuits underlying altruistic punishment are partly targeted by the oxytonergic system and highlight the importance of neuromodulators in group cohesion and norm enforcement within social groups.
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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.