Salivary Oxytocin Has Nonlinear Relationships with Trust and Reciprocity

Sakura Arai, Motoki Watabe (), Kei Kanari, Qiulu Shou, Frank Krueger and Haruto Takagishi ()
Additional contact information
Sakura Arai: Brain Science Institute, Tamagawa University, 6-1-1 Tamagawagakuen, Machida, Tokyo 194-8610, Japan
Motoki Watabe: Sunway Business School, Sunway University, Jalan Lagoon Selatan, Bandar Sunway 46150, Selangor, Malaysia
Kei Kanari: Department of Fundamental Engineering, Utsunomiya University, 7-1-2 Yoto, Utsunomiya 321-8585, Japan
Qiulu Shou: Graduate School of Brain Sciences, Tamagawa University, 6-1-1 Tamagawagakuen, Machida, Tokyo 194-8610, Japan
Frank Krueger: School of Systems Biology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA
Haruto Takagishi: Brain Science Institute, Tamagawa University, 6-1-1 Tamagawagakuen, Machida, Tokyo 194-8610, Japan

Games, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Oxytocin has been proposed to regulate human trust. Previous experiments supported this claim by demonstrating that exogenous and endogenous oxytocin is associated with trust (how much trust people place in strangers) and reciprocity (how much people reciprocate when trusted). However, recent replication attempts have been unsuccessful in demonstrating the trust-enhancing effect of oxytocin, and there is limited evidence on whether oxytocin is associated with reciprocity. This study aimed to replicate the previously found nonlinear relationships between the endogenous oxytocin concentration and both trust and reciprocity by utilizing a monetarily incentivized trust game. In a college sample, we found that salivary oxytocin levels showed (i) an inverted U-shaped relationship with trust in men and (ii) a U-shaped relationship with reciprocity in women. The current results confirm the previous finding that endogenous oxytocin levels have nonlinear relationships with trust and reciprocity. Further research on the role of oxytocin secretion in trust and reciprocity is warranted.

Keywords: oxytocin; trust; reciprocity; trust game (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/14/1/17/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4336/14/1/17/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jgames:v:14:y:2023:i:1:p:17-:d:1073905

Access Statistics for this article

Games is currently edited by Ms. Susie Huang

More articles in Games from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().