Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Storytelling increases oxytocin and positive emotions and decreases cortisol and pain in hospitalized children.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 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
16 citing papers in PubMed, 95 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessing the effect of Loving-Kindness Meditation on pain and social well-being using a randomized controlled trial design.PloS one · 2026Trial
- Developmental Care in the Early Years in Pediatric Intensive Care Patients as a Strategy to Mitigate Pediatric Post-Intensive-Care Syndrome: A Narrative Review.Journal of intensive care medicine · 2026Review
- Endogenous oxytocin-linked heart-rate synchrony and social connection during live sports spectatorship.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Rethinking pain: a paradigm shift in primary care for chronic pain via community-based, culturally-responsive GP support.Pain management · 2025Article
- Neural dynamics of semantic control underlying generative storytelling.Communications biology · 2025Article
- The role of narratives in promoting vaccine confidence among Indigenous peoples in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand: a scoping review.International journal for equity in health · 2025Article
- Lead with Your Story: The 2024 ASBrS Presidential Address.Annals of surgical oncology · 2024Article
- Oxytocin predicts positive affect gains in a role-play interaction.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- The association between neuropeptide oxytocin and neuropsychiatric disorders after orthopedic surgery stress in older patients.BMC geriatrics · 2023Article
- Investigating Non-Pharmacological Stress Reduction Interventions in Pediatric Patients Confirmed with Salivary Cortisol Levels: A Systematic Review.Pediatric reports · 2023Review
- Exploring Non-Invasive Salivary Biomarkers for Acute Pain Diagnostics: A Comprehensive Review.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Stress during the COVID-19 Pandemic Moderates Pain Perception and Momentary Oxytocin Levels.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Neuroendocrine and psychophysiological investigation of the evolutionary roots of gossip.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Advances in human oxytocin measurement: challenges and proposed solutions.Molecular psychiatry · 2023Review
- Oxytocin Reactivity during a Wilderness Program without Parents in Adolescents.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Culture as Medicine for the Blackfeet Community: A pilot intervention.Tribal college and university research journal · 2022Article
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 6 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Storytelling is a distinctive human characteristic that may have played a fundamental role in humans' ability to bond and navigate challenging social settings throughout our evolution. However, the potential impact of storytelling on regulating physiological and psychological functions has received little attention. We investigated whether listening to narratives from a storyteller can provide beneficial effects for children admitted to intensive care units. Biomarkers (oxytocin and cortisol), pain scores, and psycholinguistic associations were collected immediately before and after storytelling and an active control intervention (solving riddles that also involved social interaction but lacked the immersive narrative aspect). Compared with the control group, children in the storytelling group showed a marked increase in oxytocin combined with a decrease in cortisol in saliva after the 30-min intervention. They also reported less pain and used more positive lexical markers when describing their time in hospital. Our findings provide a psychophysiological basis for the short-term benefits of storytelling and suggest that a simple and inexpensive intervention may help alleviate the physical and psychological pain of hospitalized children on the day of the intervention.
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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.