Failed Replication of Oxytocin Effects on Trust : The Envelope Task Case
(2015) International Convention of Psychological Science — Location: Amsterdam (12.March.2015)
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Poster_OT_ET_ICPS.ppt
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- Abstract
- The neurohormone Oxytocin (OT) has been of the most studied peptides in behavioral sciences over the past two decades. OT benefits from a strong reputation as a social hormone, notably having shown that OT increases trust, facilitates mind reading, make people more sensitive to other’s felling, promotes altruistic behaviors, is linked with parent-infant attachment and enhances non-kin perceived trustworthiness and attractiveness. Among these findings, the research on OT and trust has been both pioneer and the most prolific, showing that people on OT are more trusting during a dilemma kwon as “trust game”, maintain their trust after a betrayal but keep their judgment capacities by increasing their trusting behavior only toward reliable partner. Although most of these studies were based on economic paradigms, one of them demonstrated that this hormone also increases trust when not money but confidential information was at stake. This study, based on the “Envelope Task” paradigm (participants have to fill a questionnaire about very intimate topics like sexual practices and they are asked to put the questionnaire into an envelope. They are free to leave the envelope open or to close it and even to seal it with sticky paper. The opening degree of the envelope reflects participants’ trust toward the experimenter who has previously promise not to look at the questionnaire), showed one of the most powerful effects of OT on a behavioral variable. Therefore, this paradigm seemed to be an ideal candidate as a manipulation check for future research on OT as it is easy to set up, ecological and seems to work very well. However, in this poster we present two failed replication of this effect. Those results question the replicability of OT’s effects. As several researchers have demonstrated it, they are more and more evidence that OT effects are contextually shaped. Those replication failures underline the existence of potential unknown moderators of OT mechanism which have yep to be discovered if we are to understand when OT influences human behavior and when it does not. Meanwhile, research teams should be warned that paradigms that have worked once may not always maintain their promises
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Citations
Lane, A., Mikolajczak, M., Treinen, E., Samson, D., Corneille, O., de Timary, P., & Luminet, O. (2015). Failed Replication of Oxytocin Effects on Trust : The Envelope Task Case. International Convention of Psychological Science, Amsterdam. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/186023