Abstract:

A growing number of studies have recently focused on the functional significance of oxytocin (OT) in human social decision-making. With various experimental paradigms being developed, previous studies have shown that oxytocin (OT)plays an important regulatory role in interpersonal decision-making. In the OT research field, researchers have looked into many aspects of social decision-making, including cooperation and protection, morality, trust, generous behavior. Three possible hypotheses for oxytocin function were proposed to interpret current findings, however, no unified theory has yet been suggested to integrate all the observed phenomena. Future studies should focus on the physiological mechanisms of intranasal OT and receptor gene polymorphisms, take the gender differences into consideration, and establish a more appropriate and testable theoretical model.

Key words: oxytocin, cooperation and protection, morality, trust, generosity