Is oxytocin a trust hormone? Salivary oxytocin is associated with caution but not with general trust

Abstract

Studies on the association between trust and oxytocin, a neuropeptide of the central nervous system, have not reached a consensus, thereby challenging the possibility of a direct association between the two. However, previous studies have not examined how oxytocin is correlated with trust, based on its categorization into different factors in the field of social science. For instance, based on Yamagishi’s trust theory, trust can be categorized into two factors: general trust and caution. General trust refers to beliefs about the trustworthiness of others, whereas caution refers to the belief that caution is needed when dealing with high social uncertainty. In this study, to examine the relationship between these two factors and oxytocin, we analyzed data of 197 adults (men = 98, women = 99; mean age = 41.7 years; standard deviation for age = 10.4 years) and examined the relationships between these two factors of trust and endogenous salivary oxytocin levels. We found that oxytocin was positively correlated with caution rather than with general trust thereby suggesting that oxytocin plays a role in regulating caution rather than general trust among the components of trust. The present study demonstrated that salivary oxytocin level can act as a biomarker that partially predicts one’s trust, especially as reflected by caution.

Oxytocin does not stand alone

“…However, accompanying this excitement are welljustified critiques. These include the following: (i) our understanding of how oxytocin modulates social cognition is lacking in methodological rigour [14][15][16][17]; (ii) the effects of oxytocin treatment can be highly context-dependent [18,19]; (iii) we are still building a mechanistic understanding for how oxytocin impacts social behaviours at the neurobiological level [9,[20][21][22][23][24]; (iv) developmental and life experience can drastically change the function of oxytocinergic systems [25][26][27]; and (v) we lack a single overarching theory to predict how oxytocin may modulate behaviour [28][29][30][31]. These critical examinations are fundamental for advancing our understanding of oxytocin, enabling the utilization of oxytocinergic mechanisms as a means to study the neurobiology of social behaviours [32,33] and as a curative tool to restore the deficits in social cognition observed across a variety of psychiatric disorders [34,35].…”