Abstract
Oxytocin (OXT) has been implicated in prosocial behaviors such as trust and generosity. Yet, these effects appear to strongly depend on characteristics of the situation and the people with whom we interact or make decisions. Norms and rules can facilitate and guide our actions, with fairness being a particularly salient and fundamental norm. The current study investigated the effects of intranasal OXT administration on fairness considerations in social decision-making in a double-blind, placebo-controlled within-subject design. After having received 24 IU of OXT or placebo (PLC), participants completed a one-shot Dictator Game (DG) and played the role of the responder in a modified version of the Ultimatum Game (UG), in which an unfair offer of eight coins for the proposer and two coins for the responder is paired with either a fair-(5:5) or no-alternative (8:2). Rejection rates were higher when a fair alternative had been available than when there was no alternative to an unfair offer. Importantly, OXT did not de-or increase rejection rates overall, but reduced the sensitivity to contextual fairness, i.e., the context of alternatives in which an offer was made. As dictators, participants allocated less coins to the recipient when given OXT than when given PLC, indicating a decline in generosity. These results suggest that OXT decreases the adherence to fairness norms in social settings where others are likely to be perceived as not belonging to one's ingroup. While our findings do not support the prosocial conception of OXT, they corroborate recent ideas that the effects of OXT are more nuanced than assumed in the past.
Highlights
The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) has received much attention for its role in social cognition and prosocial behavior (MeyerLindenberg, 2008; Macdonald and Macdonald, 2010)
MODIFIED Ultimatum Game (UG) The ANOVA revealed a main effect of context, F(1, 23) = 15.80, p < 0.01, η2 = 0.41, indicating that rejection rates were higher in the fair-alternative condition (M = 54.95%) than in the noalternative condition (M = 22.4%)
Further analyses demonstrated that the difference in rejection rates between the fair-alternative condition and the no-alternative condition was smaller after OXT administration (M = 27.08) than after PLC (M = 38.02)
Summary
The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) has received much attention for its role in social cognition and prosocial behavior (MeyerLindenberg, 2008; Macdonald and Macdonald, 2010). Fairness is a very elementary and salient norm, for which a preference is already observable in young children (Takagishi et al, 2010; Blake and Mcauliffe, 2011) These social preferences are frequently investigated with one-shot games, among others, the Ultimatum Game (UG, Güth et al, 1982) and the Dictator Game (DG) (Forsythe et al, 1994; Fehr and Camerer, 2007; Fehr, 2008). In the DG, on the contrary, the decision in unilateral on behalf of the allocator and the second player must accept any offer, remaining utterly powerless. In both games, empirical data differs from a “rational” approach of maximizing one’s payoff (Güth et al, 1982)
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