Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
Dissociable glucocorticoid and noradrenergic effects on parochial cooperation and competition in intergroup conflict.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Dissociable glucocorticoid and noradrenergic effects on parochial cooperation and competition in intergroup conflict.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Trial
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Stress changes social behavior, yet its effects remain contradictory. Traditionally, stress was thought to trigger an antagonistic fight-or-flight response aimed at eliminating the stressor. However, recent studies have revealed the opposite response, tend-and-befriend, where individuals prosocially invest in their social network in exchange for support and mutual protection. We hypothesize that stress does not promote one response over the other; instead, it stimulates both behaviors, dissociable on the neuropharmacological level and moderated by social context. In a placebo-controlled, double-blind psychopharmacological study, we administered hydrocortisone and yohimbine-alone or in combination-to manipulate the actions of the main stress hormone cortisol and the arousal transmitter noradrenaline. Participants then made decisions in an intergroup conflict task. They teamed up with others to form an in-group and played against multiple out-groups. Notably, out-group members initiated financial harm to in-group participants before these responded. Participants then chose either to 1) maximize their own payoff, 2) cooperatively increase the payoff of their in-group, or 3) increase the in-group's payoff while competitively decreasing that of the out-group. Consistent with our hypotheses, glucocorticoid activation increased generosity toward the in-group, whereas noradrenergic activation increased parochial competition, i.e., prosocial in-group support combined with hostility toward the out-group. These findings challenge the dichotomy between fight-or-flight and tend-and-befriend, suggesting stress-related behavior is neither static nor one-directional, but shaped by the relative dominance of cortisol versus noradrenaline in the neurohormonal stress response and by intergroup dynamics. We highlight broader societal implications, offering a potential biological mechanism underlying the self-perpetuating cycle of intergroup conflict.
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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.