Intranasal administration of oxytocin increases compassion toward women

doi:10.1093/scan/nsu040 SCAN (2015) 10, 311^317 Intranasal administration of oxytocin increases compassion toward women Sharon Palgi,1,2 Ehud Klein,2 and Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory1 1 Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel and 2Department of Psychiatry, Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel Keywords: oxytocin; compassion; empathy; sex differences INTRODUCTION Human pro-social behaviors are characterized by acts undertaken to protect or promote the welfare and safety of other persons or groups (Schwartz and Bilsky, 1990). These behaviors, which integrate individuals into a cohesive and united society, have social evolutionary value as through such behaviors humans provide physical and mental levels of security to each other, well beyond what individuals could possibly achieve alone (Darwin, 1871/2004; De Dreu, 2012). One of the salient pro-social feelings that drive us to help others is compassion. Compassion may be defined as the feeling of warmth, understanding, sadness and kindness that arises in witnessing the distress and suffering of others. This feeling motivates the desire to help and care for others (Lazarus, 1991; Goetz et al., 2010). Compassion is a complex and multidimensional feeling that integrates not only the sense of empathythe ability to recognize, understand and metalize the thoughts, desires and feelings of others (Davis, 1996; Batson, 2009)but also the ability to recognize that someone else suffers and to separate the distress of the other from self-distress (Lazarus, 1991; Nussbaum, 1996). Furthermore, compassion motivates caring behaviors aimed at relieving the suffering and distress of others (Batson, 1998; Goetz et al., 2010). Thus, compassion is a complex emotional state that motivates pro-social behavior. Zaki and Ochsner (2012) recently proposed, a model of empathy, which includes three components: (i) affective empathy and experience sharing, (ii) cognitive empathy and mentalization ability, (iii) empathic motivation and empathic concern, the third component includes the pro-social motivation to help others as a result of using one or both components of empathy (affective and cognitive). As such, compassion appears to be based on both components of empathy and therefore, empathy seems to be the initial trigger of compassion and may motivate the compassionate reaction. Received 3 July 2013; Revised 19 January 2014; Accepted 3 March 2014 Advance Access publication 7 April 2014 This work was supported by the 2010 National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD) Independent Investigator Award (Shamay-Tsoory). Correspondence should be addressed to Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory, Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. E-mail: Evolutionary accounts view compassion as a survival affective state that is oriented toward enhancing the welfare of those who suffer, and especially intended to protect vulnerable offspring (Darwin, 1871/2004; Frank, 1988; Sober and Wilson, 1998). A central characteristic of compassion is the adjustment of the appropriate response to the target distress. Goetz et al. (2010) propose that degree of compassion is shaped by the assumptions of the observer about the other’s suffering. For example, individuals and groups who are stereotypically perceived as affectionate and warm may trigger more compassion in an observer than those who are perceived as cold and aloof. Thus, because women are perceived as more warm and compassionate than men (e.g. Rudman et al., 2001; Fiske et al., 2002), their distress may provoke more compassion in an observer than will the distress of men. This assumption receives support from a meta-analysis review on helping behavior, showing that women in trouble received more help than men (Eagly and Crowley, 1986), perhaps since they evoked a higher sense of compassion. Although compassion is central to human behavior, its biological underpinnings are largely unknown. Neuroscience studies suggest that several regions of the brain are involved in compassion, among them the interior frontal cortex, the insula and the temporal pole, which may mediate mirroring the emotions of the other; the middle and ventral prefrontal cortex involved in cognitive assessment and understanding of the other’s suffering; the periaqueductal gray (PAG), substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area involved in feeling warmth or tenderness toward others; the midbrain PAG involved the perception of other’s pain; and networks within the left hemisphere involved in overarching motivation to approach (for review, Goetz et al., 2010; Simon-Thomas et al., 2012). Nonetheless, studies on the neurobiological mechanisms that mediate compassion are scarce. Because compassion is a social emotion, it is reasonable to assume that neuropeptides such as oxytocin (OT), which has been found to mediate complex pro-social, affective and tending behaviors, should play a key role in mediating compassion. OT is a nine amino-acid cyclic neuropeptide produced in the brain, which is synthesized in the hypothalamic paraventricular (PVN) and supraoptic nuclei (SON), and store and released into the brain and bloodstream from ß The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: It has been suggested that the degree of compassionthe feeling of warmth, understanding and kindness that motivates the desire to help others, is modulated by observers views regarding the targets vulnerability and suffering. This study tested the hypothesis that as compassion developed to protect vulnerable kinships, hormones such as oxytocin, which have been suggested as playing a key role in tend-and-befriend behaviors among women, will enhance compassion toward women but not toward men. Thirty subjects participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject study. Following administration of oxytocin/placebo, participants listened to recordings of different female/male protagonists describing distressful emotional conflicts and were then asked to provide compassionate advice to the protagonist. The participants responses were coded according to various components of compassion by two clinical psychologists who were blind to the treatment. The results showed that in women and men participants oxytocin enhanced compassion toward women, but did not affect compassion toward men. These findings indicate that the oxytocinergic system differentially mediates compassion toward women and toward men, emphasizing an evolutionary perspective that views compassion as a caregiving behavior designed to help vulnerable individuals. 312 SCAN (2015) differentially affect compassion toward the distress of women and of men. In addition we examined whether OT enhances compassion toward women, both in men and women participants. We measured compassion using a situation that resembles real inter-personal everyday interactions: the partic (...truncated)