Opposing Oxytocin Effects on Intergroup Cooperative Behavior in Intuitive and Reflective Minds.

ABSTRACT: People often favor ingroup over outgroup members when choosing to cooperate. Such ingroup-favored cooperation is promoted by oxytocin-a neuropeptide shown to facilitate social cognition and that has emerged as a pharmacological target for treatments of social functioning deficits. The current study applied a dual-process model to investigate whether and how intuitive and reflective cognitive styles affect the oxytocin-motivated ingroup favoritism in cooperation. We examined oxytocin effects on ingroup favoritism in a double-blind, placebo-controlled between-subjects design where cognitive processing (intuition vs reflection) was experimentally manipulated in healthy Chinese males (n=150). We also supplemented this experimental manipulation with an individual difference analysis by assessin

SUBMITTER: Ma Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4538352 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature