ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2022
Oxytocin has 'tend-and-defend' functionality in group conflict across social vertebrates.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Neural Bases of Collective Social Behavior and Group Interactions across Species.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Close encounters of the friendly kind: pacific between-group interactions in primates.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Reciprocity evolves more readily in competitive than cooperative socio-ecologies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Oxytocin activity is not linked to out-group prosociality in wild bonobos.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Egalitarian cooperation linked to central oxytocin levels in communal breeding house mice.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Oxytocin homogenizes horse group organization.iScience · 2024Article
- Intranasal oxytocin interacts with testosterone reactivity to modulate parochial altruism.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Increased alertness and moderate ingroup cohesion in bonobos' response to outgroup cues.PloS one · 2024Article
- Changes in peripheral oxytocin and vasopressin during a silent month-long Insight meditation retreat.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2024Article
- A journey from speech to dance through the field of oxytocin.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2023Review
- An AAV-CRISPR/Cas9 strategy for gene editing across divergent rodent species: Targeting neural oxytocin receptors as a proof of concept.Science advances · 2023Article
- Parochial cooperation in wild chimpanzees: a model to explain the evolution of parochial altruism.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Drivers and outcomes of between-group conflict in vervet monkeys.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Intergroup conflict: origins, dynamics and consequences across taxa.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 7 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Across vertebrate species, intergroup conflict confronts individuals with a tension between group interests best served by participation in conflict and personal interest best served by not participating. Here, we identify the neurohormone oxytocin as pivotal to the neurobiological regulation of this tension in distinctly different group-living vertebrates, including fishes, birds, rodents, non-human primates and humans. In the context of intergroup conflict, a review of emerging work on pro-sociality suggests that oxytocin and its fish and birds homologues, isotocin and mesotocin, respectively, can elicit participation in group conflict and aggression. This is because it amplifies (i) concern for the interests of genetically related or culturally similar 'in-group' others and (ii) willingness to defend against outside intruders and enemy conspecifics. Across a range of social vertebrates, oxytocin can induce aggressive behaviour to 'tend-and-defend' the in-group during intergroup contests. This article is part of the theme issue 'Intergroup conflict across taxa'.
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