Niall Bolger

Social effects of oxytocin in humans: context and person matter

Building on animal research, the past decade has witnessed a surge of interest in the effects of oxytocin on social cognition and prosocial behavior in humans. This work has generated considerable excitement about identifying the neurochemical underpinnings of sociality in humans, and discovering compounds to treat social functioning deficits. Inspection of the literature, however, reveals that the effects of oxytocin in the social domain are often weak and/or inconsistent. We propose that this literature can be informed by an interactionist approach in which the effects of oxytocin are constrained by features of situations and/or individuals. We show how this approach can improve understanding of extant research, suggest novel mechanisms through which oxytocin might operate, and refine predictions about oxytocin pharmacotherapy.

Effects of daily stress on negative mood.

This article examines the influence of daily stressors on mental health in a community sample. Ss were 166 married couples who completed diaries each day for 6 weeks. In pooled within-person analyses, daily stressors explained up to 20% of the variance in mood. Interpersonal conflicts were by far the most distressing events. Furthermore, when stressors occurred on a series of days, emotional habituation occurred by the second day for almost all events except interpersonal conflicts. Contrary to certain theoretical accounts, multiple stressors on the same day did not exacerbate one anothers effects: rather an emotional plateau occurred. Finally on days following a stressful event, mood was better than it would have been if the stressor had not happened. These results reveal the complex emotional effects of daily stressors, and in particular they suggest that future investigations should focus primarily on interpersonal conflicts.

A Procedure for Evaluating Sensitivity to Within-Person Change: Can Mood Measures in Diary Studies Detect Change Reliably?

The recent growth in diary and experience sampling research has increased research attention on how people change over time in natural settings. Often however, the measures in these studies were originally developed for studying between-person differences, and their sensitivity to within-person changes is usually unknown. Using a Generalizability Theory framework, the authors illustrate a procedure for developing reliable measures of change using a version of the Profile of Mood States (POMS; McNair, Lorr, & Droppleman, 1992) shortened for diary studies. Analyzing two data sets, one composed of 35 daily reports from 68 persons experiencing a stressful examination and another composed of daily reports from 164 persons over a typical 28-day period, we demonstrate that three-item measures of anxious mood, depressed mood, anger, fatigue, and vigor have appropriate reliability to detect within-person change processes.

Oxytocin Selectively Improves Empathic Accuracy

Oxytocin is known to regulate prosocial behavior and social cognition in animals (Ross & Young, 2009), and recent studies suggest that oxytocin may have similar functions in humans. For example, oxytocin increases trust (Kosfeld, Heinrichs, Zak, Fischbacher, & Fehr, 2005) and accuracy in mental-state attribution (Domes, Heinrichs, Michel, Berger, & Herpertz, 2007; Guastella et al., 2009). These findings have generated excitement about oxytocin’s potential to ameliorate social deficits in such disorders as social phobia and autism (Bartz & Hollander, 2006; Guastella et al., 2009; Kosfeld et al., 2005). This excitement has not been confined to the scientific community: Dubbed the “hormone of love,” oxytocin is a common topic in the popular press. Is oxytocin truly a universal social panacea? Although some studies have shown that oxytocin improves social cognition and empathy (Domes et al., 2007; Guastella et al., 2009), others have not (Singer et al., 2008). Even studies demonstrating positive effects have ambiguities: Domes et al. (2007) found that oxytocin improved performance for difficult—but not easy—test items. These observations imply that rather than working universally, oxytocin may selectively facilitate social cognition given certain constraints. For example, by altering specific motivational or cognitive states, oxytocin might increase the salience of social cues, which in turn could improve social-cognitive performance for some individuals, but not others. The effects of oxytocin, then, should be most pronounced in individuals who—at baseline—are less socially proficient; this would be consistent with broader interactionist views emphasizing that individual differences in competencies interact with situational variables to determine behavior (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). To test whether normal variance in social proficiency moderates the effects of oxytocin on social-cognitive performance, we used a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover challenge in which participants received either intranasal oxytocin or a placebo and performed an empathicaccuracy task that naturalistically measures social-cognitive abilities (Zaki, Bolger, & Ochsner, 2008). We measured variance in baseline social competencies with the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Skinner, Martin, & Clubley, 2001), a self-report instrument that predicts social-cognitive performance (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001). We hypothesized that drug condition and AQ score would interact to predict performance on the empathic-accuracy task, with oxytocin having the most pronounced effects for less socially proficient individuals (i.e., those with higher AQ scores).

The neural bases of empathic accuracy

Theories of empathy suggest that an accurate understanding of anothers emotions should depend on affective, motor, and/or higher cognitive brain regions, but until recently no experimental method has been available to directly test these possibilities. Here, we present a functional imaging paradigm that allowed us to address this issue. We found that empathically accurate, as compared with inaccurate, judgments depended on (i) structures within the human mirror neuron system thought to be involved in shared sensorimotor representations, and (ii) regions implicated in mental state attribution, the superior temporal sulcus and medial prefrontal cortex. These data demostrate that activity in these 2 sets of brain regions tracks with the accuracy of attributions made about anothers internal emotional state. Taken together, these results provide both an experimental approach and theoretical insights for studying empathy and its dysfunction.

Receiving Support as a Mixed Blessing: Evidence for Dual Effects of Support on Psychological Outcomes

Although social support is thought to boost feelings of closeness in dyadic relationships, recent findings have suggested that support receipt can increase distress in recipients. The authors investigated these apparently contrary findings in a large daily diary study of couples over 31 days leading up to a major stressor. Results confirm that daily support receipt was associated with greater feelings of closeness and greater negative mood. These average effects, however, masked substantial heterogeneity. In particular, those recipients showing greater benefits on closeness tended to show lesser cost on negative mood, and vice versa. Self-esteem was examined as a possible moderator of support effects, but its role was evident in only a subset of recipients. These results imply that models of dyadic support processes must accord a central role to between-individual heterogeneity.

Effects of oxytocin on recollections of maternal care and closeness

Although the infant–caregiver attachment bond is critical to survival, little is known about the biological mechanisms supporting attachment representations in humans. Oxytocin plays a key role in attachment bond formation and maintenance in animals and thus could be expected to affect attachment representations in humans. To investigate this possibility, we administered 24 IU intranasal oxytocin to healthy male adults in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover designed study and then assessed memories of childhood maternal care and closeness—two features of the attachment bond. We found that the effects of oxytocin were moderated by the attachment representations people possess, with less anxiously attached individuals remembering their mother as more caring and close after oxytocin (vs. placebo) but more anxiously attached individuals remembering their mother as less caring and close after oxytocin (vs. placebo). These data contrast with the popular notion that oxytocin has broad positive effects on social perception and are more consistent with the animal literature, which emphasizes oxytocins role in encoding social memories and linking those memories to the reward value of the social stimulus.

Persons in context : developmental processes

Preface 1. Development in context: research perspectives Niall Bolger, Avshalom Caspi, Geraldine Downey and Martha Moorehouse 2. Interacting systems in human development. Research paradigms: present and future Urie Bronfenbrenner 3. Children, families, and communities: ways of viewing their relationships to each other Jacqueline J. Goodnow 4. Human development and social change: an emerging perspective on the life course Glen H. Elder, Jr. and Avshalom Caspi 5. Family process: loops,cess: loops, levels and linkages Gerald R. Patterson 6. On the constructive role of problem behaviour in adolescence Rainer K. Silbereisen and Peter Noack 7. The sociogenesis of self concepts Robert B. Cairns and Beverly D. Cairns 8. Putting persons back into the context Daryl J. Bem 9. How genotypes and environments combine: development and individual differences Sandra Scarr Author index Subject index.

Modeling Support Provision in Intimate Relationships

Whereas supportive interactions are usually studied from the perspective of recipients alone, the authors used a dyadic design to incorporate the perspectives of both provider and recipient. In 2 daily diary studies, the authors modeled provider reports of support provision in intimate dyads over several weeks. The 1st involved couples experiencing daily stressors (n = 79); the 2nd involved couples experiencing a major professional stressor (n = 196). The authors hypothesized that factors relating to (a) recipients (their requests for support, moods, and stressful events), (b) providers (their moods and stressful events), (c) the relationship (relationship emotions and history of support exchanges), and (d) the stressor (daily vs. major stressors) would each predict daily support provision. Across both studies, characteristics of providers, recipients, and their relationship emerged as key predictors. Implications for theoretical models of dyadic support processes are discussed.

The time course of grief reactions to spousal loss: evidence from a national probability sample.

Most studies of widowhood have focused on reactions during the first few years postloss. The authors investigated whether widowhood had more enduring effects using a nationally representative U.S. sample. Participants were 768 individuals who had lost their spouse (from a few months to 64 years) prior to data collection. Results indicated that the widowed continued to talk, think, and feel emotions about their lost spouse decades later. Twenty years postloss, the widowed thought about their spouse once every week or 2 and had a conversation about their spouse once a month on average. About 12.6 years postloss, the widowed reported feeling upset between sometimes and rarely when they thought about their spouse. These findings add to an understanding of the time course of grief.