Abstract
The oxytocinergic system is crucial for sociality and well-being and is associated with empathy. It is suggested that the oxytocinergic system exerts context- and person-dependent effects. We examined how sexual sadistic contexts influenced the effects of the oxytocinergic system on empathic-related behaviors and brain activity in healthy adults. Combining genetic neuroimaging, pharmacological techniques and a psychological paradigm of empathy, we recorded EEG neural responses in female OXTR rs53756 G/G and A/A carriers and measured subjective empathic ratings after intranasal administration of oxytocin/placebo in healthy male adults during the perception of painful facial expressions in sadistic/general social contexts. The results revealed that sadistic contexts modulate oxytocinergic effects on empathy at both behavioral and neural levels. The oxytocinergic system preferentially modulated empathic responses to sadistic contexts. These effects are moderated by individual’s trait empathy. Our combined genetic-pharmacological-imaging results provide a neurochemical mechanism for sadistic context-dependent effects of the oxytocinergic system on empathy.
Highlights
Empathy, which is the understanding and sharing of the emotional states or conditions of others, plays a vital role in social interaction and benefits human society by promoting prosocial behaviors[1,2,3,4]
Several studies that evaluated the effects of oxytocin or oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) on affect sharing/empathy reported nonsignificant main effects; instead, the effects of the oxytocinergic system on emotional processes were influenced by personal factors or task/stimulus variables[3,12,13,14,15]
We primarily focused on the functional effects of the oxytocinergic system on individuals’ empathic responses to others’ suffering in sexual sadistic contexts
Summary
Empathy, which is the understanding and sharing of the emotional states or conditions of others, plays a vital role in social interaction and benefits human society by promoting prosocial behaviors[1,2,3,4]. We primarily focused on the functional effects of the oxytocinergic system on individuals’ empathic responses to others’ suffering in sexual sadistic contexts (vs general contexts). Experiment 1 measured empathic neural responses to others’ suffering in different social contexts (sadistic painful, general painful, and general neutral) by recording electroencephalography (EEG) responses in individuals with the homozygous A/A and G/G genotypes of OXTR rs53576. This approach allowed us to examine whether there is an association between OXTR rs53576 and empathic responses and whether this association is modulated by sadistic contexts. Experiment 2 further investigated whether intranasal oxytocin interacts with social contexts to affect subjective empathic ratings and whether this sadistic context-dependent oxytocin effect is driven by enhanced empathic responses to painful expressions in sadistic contexts or decreased empathic responses to painful expressions in general contexts
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