AI Article Synopsis
- Stress responses to new social situations decrease as individuals become more familiar with them.
- The study explored the role of oxytocin, which is known to enhance trust and reduce anxiety, in this familiarization process among 59 healthy female participants over two sessions.
- Findings revealed a positive correlation between trust and oxytocin levels in novel situations, and a negative correlation in familiar situations, suggesting that oxytocin helps ease stress when adapting to new social contexts.
Article Abstract
Stress or arousal responses to novel social contexts ease off when individuals get familiar with the social context. In the present study we investigated whether oxytocin is involved in this process of familiarization-habituation as oxytocin is known to increase trust and decrease anxiety. Fifty-nine healthy female subjects took part in the same experimental procedure in two sessions separated by 4 weeks. In the first (novelty) session state trust scores were significantly positively correlated with salivary oxytocin levels while in the second (familiarity) session state trust scores were significantly negatively correlated with salivary oxytocin levels. In a path model oxytocin was associated with increased trust in the novelty session and trust was associated with decreased oxytocin levels in the familiarity session. The results are consistent with the idea that oxytocin decreases stress-to-novelty responses by promoting familiarization to novel social contexts.
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Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3798760 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00761 | DOI Listing |
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