Abstract: Oxytocin is a prosocial hormone that also has an important influence on human beings’ empathic responses. It can promote emotion recognition, enhance the empathic concern regarding others’ unfortunate experiences, and weaken the level of personal distress. With reference to the mechanisms, oxytocin may influence an individual's empathic response by promoting his/her embodied-simulation ability, weakening the tendency of self-centeredness, and regulating the emotional representation mechanism. Future studies could focus on the effects of oxytocin on the different types of empathic responses, the effects of oxytocin on gender differences in empathic responses, and actively using oxytocin in clinical interventions for empathy deficits.

Key words: oxytocin, empathic response, embodied-simulation, self-projection, emotional representation