Oxytocin restores context-specific hyperaltruistic preference.

ABSTRACT: Recent advances in moral decision-making research show people are hyperaltruistic by being more willing to sacrifice monetary gains to spare others from suffering than to spare themselves. Yet other studies indicate an opposite egoistic bias: subjects are less willing to harm themselves for others' benefits than for their own. These results underscore the complexities of moral decisions and demand a mechanistic explanation for hyperaltruistic preferences. We investigated hyperaltruism using trade-off choices combining monetary gains and painful electric shocks and choices combining monetary losses and shocks. Study 1 revealed that switching the decision context from gains to losses effectively eliminated the hyperaltruistic preference, accompanied by the altered relationship between subjec

SUBMITTER: Zhang H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12456949 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature