Open AccessOpposing effects of oxytocin on moral judgment in males and females
Author(s) -
Scheele Dirk,
Striepens Nadine,
Kendrick Keith M.,
Schwering Christine,
Noelle Janka,
Wille Andrea,
Schläpfer Thomas E.,
Maier Wolfgang,
Hurlemann René
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
human brain mapping
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.005
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1097-0193
pISSN - 1065-9471
DOI - 10.1002/hbm.22605
Subject(s) - disgust , psychology , oxytocin , morality , functional magnetic resonance imaging , feeling , offspring , developmental psychology , social psychology , neuropeptide , neuroscience , anger , pregnancy , biology , political science , law , genetics , biochemistry , chemistry , receptor
Abstract Current perspectives on the evolutionary roots of human morality suggest it arose to incentivize social cooperation by promoting feelings of disgust toward selfish behavior, although the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. To investigate whether the ancient mammalian neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) influences self‐referential processing in the domains of emotion evaluation and moral decision making, we conducted a pharmaco‐functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a behavioral experiment involving 157 healthy women and men who were treated with either OXT (24 IU) or placebo (PLC) intranasally. Our results show that OXT facilitated cortical midline responses during self‐processing of disgust and selectively promoted self‐interest moral judgments in men. In contrast, in women OXT increased the reaction time difference between accepted and rejected moral dilemmas and led them to suppress their self‐interest and respond more altruistically for the benefit of others. Taken together, these findings suggest an OXT‐related sexual dimorphism in human moral behavior which evolved adaptively to optimize both protection and nurturing of offspring by promoting selfish behavior in men and altruistic behavior in women. Hum Brain Mapp 35:6067–6076, 2014 . © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.