Abstract
Empathy is an essential component of sensitive caregiving behavior, which in turn is an important predictor of children’s healthy social-emotional development. The oxytocin (OXT) system plays a key role in promoting sensitive parenting and empathy. In this study, we investigated how OXT system gene methylation was associated with empathic processes in nulliparous women (M age = 23.60, SD =0.44)—measuring both physiological facial muscle responses and ratings of compassion and positive affect to affective images depicting children. Linear mixed effects analyses demonstrated that lower methylation levels in the OXT and OXTR genes were related to enhanced empathic responses. The effect of OXT system gene methylation on empathic processes was partly qualified by an interaction with individual variations in women’s care motivation. Our findings provide experimental evidence for an association between the methylation of OXT system genes and empathy.
Highlights
Empathy involves the understanding and sharing of the affective states of others (De Waal and Preston, 2017; Decety and Jackson, 2004)
The current study aimed to investigate how individual variations in OXT and OXTR gene methylation levels influenced empathic processes in response to affective images of children
We tested if an interaction with individual variations in care motivation further quali fied the association between OXT system gene methylation levels and empathic processes
Summary
Empathy involves the understanding and sharing of the affective states of others (De Waal and Preston, 2017; Decety and Jackson, 2004). Previous studies that tested the effect of allelic variations of OXT system genes on social behavior provided mixed and inconclusive findings (Bakermans-Kranenburg and van IJzendoorn, 2014; Feldman et al, 2015). Since positive effects of OXT administration on empathic processes were previously shown to be most pronounced in less socially competent individuals (Bartz et al, 2010), we exploratively tested if effects of OXT system gene methylation on empathic processes were most pronounced in in dividuals with low intrinsic motivation for caregiving. In the current study we investigated how individual variations in OXT and OXTR gene methylation influenced empathic processes in response to affective images depicting children by measuring facial muscle responses and ratings of compassion and affect. We exploratively tested if an inter action with individual variations in care motivation would further qualify this relation
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