IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0153352.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Oxytocin Effect on Collective Decision Making: A Randomized Placebo Controlled Study

Author

Listed:
  • Uri Hertz
  • Maria Kelly
  • Robb B Rutledge
  • Joel Winston
  • Nicholas Wright
  • Raymond J Dolan
  • Bahador Bahrami

Abstract

Collective decision making often benefits both the individuals and the group in a variety of contexts. However, for the group to be successful, individuals should be able to strike a balance between their level of competence and their influence on the collective decisions. The hormone oxytocin has been shown to promote trust, conformism and attention to social cues. We wondered if this hormone may increase participants’ (unwarranted) reliance on their partners’ opinion, resulting in a reduction in collective benefit by disturbing the balance between influence and competence. To test this hypothesis we employed a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled design in which male dyads self-administered intranasal oxytocin or placebo and then performed a visual search task together. Compared to placebo, collective benefit did not decrease under oxytocin. Using an exploratory time dependent analysis, we observed increase in collective benefit over time under oxytocin. Moreover, trial-by-trial analysis showed that under oxytocin the more competent member of each dyad was less likely to change his mind during disagreements, while the less competent member showed a greater willingness to change his mind and conform to the opinion of his more reliable partner. This role-dependent effect may be mediated by enhanced monitoring of own and other’s performance level under oxytocin. Such enhanced social learning could improve the balance between influence and competence and lead to efficient and beneficial collaboration.

Suggested Citation

  • Uri Hertz & Maria Kelly & Robb B Rutledge & Joel Winston & Nicholas Wright & Raymond J Dolan & Bahador Bahrami, 2016. "Oxytocin Effect on Collective Decision Making: A Randomized Placebo Controlled Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-16, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0153352
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0153352
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153352
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0153352&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0153352?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yaniv, Ilan & Kleinberger, Eli, 2000. "Advice Taking in Decision Making: Egocentric Discounting and Reputation Formation," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 260-281, November.
    2. Francisco C. Santos & Marta D. Santos & Jorge M. Pacheco, 2008. "Social diversity promotes the emergence of cooperation in public goods games," Nature, Nature, vol. 454(7201), pages 213-216, July.
    3. Michael Kosfeld & Markus Heinrichs & Paul J. Zak & Urs Fischbacher & Ernst Fehr, 2005. "Oxytocin increases trust in humans," Nature, Nature, vol. 435(7042), pages 673-676, June.
    4. Salomon Israel & Ori Weisel & Richard P. Ebstein & Gary Bornstein, 2012. "Oxytocin, but not Vasopressin, Increases both Parochial and Universal Altruism," Discussion Paper Series dp598, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    5. Timothy E. J. Behrens & Laurence T. Hunt & Mark W. Woolrich & Matthew F. S. Rushworth, 2008. "Associative learning of social value," Nature, Nature, vol. 456(7219), pages 245-249, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Seyed Mohsen Mirbagheri & Ata Ollah Rafiei Atani & Mohammadreza Parsanejad, 2023. "The Effect of Collective Decision-Making on Productivity: A Structural Equation Modeling," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carsten K W De Dreu & Shaul Shalvi & Lindred L Greer & Gerben A Van Kleef & Michel J J Handgraaf, 2012. "Oxytocin Motivates Non-Cooperation in Intergroup Conflict to Protect Vulnerable In-Group Members," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(11), pages 1-7, November.
    2. Biele, Guido & Rieskamp, Jörg & Krugel, Lea K. & Heekeren, Hauke R., 2011. "The neural basis of following advice," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2011-038, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    3. Fairley, Kim & Sanfey, Alan & Vyrastekova, Jana & Weitzel, Utz, 2016. "Trust and risk revisited," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 74-85.
    4. Chen, Yunong & Belmonte, Andrew & Griffin, Christopher, 2021. "Imitation of success leads to cost of living mediated fairness in the Ultimatum Game," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 583(C).
    5. Anne Corcos & François Pannequin & Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, 2012. "Aversions to Trust," Recherches économiques de Louvain, De Boeck Université, vol. 78(3), pages 115-134.
    6. Jason Aimone & Sheryl Ball & Brooks King-Casas, 2015. "The Betrayal Aversion Elicitation Task: An Individual Level Betrayal Aversion Measure," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-12, September.
    7. Wang, Xiaofeng & Chen, Xiaojie & Gao, Jia & Wang, Long, 2013. "Reputation-based mutual selection rule promotes cooperation in spatial threshold public goods games," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 181-187.
    8. Friedel Bolle & Jessica Kaehler, 2006. "Coleman's Hypothesis on trusting behaviour and a remark on meta-studies," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(4), pages 469-483.
    9. Yongping Bao & Ludwig Danwitz & Fabian Dvorak & Sebastian Fehrler & Lars Hornuf & Hsuan Yu Lin & Bettina von Helversen, 2022. "Similarity and Consistency in Algorithm-Guided Exploration," CESifo Working Paper Series 10188, CESifo.
    10. Wang, Chengjiang & Wang, Li & Wang, Juan & Sun, Shiwen & Xia, Chengyi, 2017. "Inferring the reputation enhances the cooperation in the public goods game on interdependent lattices," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 293(C), pages 18-29.
    11. Christian Hilbe & Moshe Hoffman & Martin A. Nowak, 2015. "Cooperate without Looking in a Non-Repeated Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 6(4), pages 1-15, September.
    12. Gehrig, Thomas & Güth, Werner & Leví0nský, René & Popova, Vera, 2010. "On the evolution of professional consulting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 113-126, October.
    13. Marco Tomassini & Alberto Antonioni, 2019. "Computational Behavioral Models for Public Goods Games on Social Networks," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, September.
    14. Konno, Tomohiko, 2013. "An imperfect competition on scale-free networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(21), pages 5453-5460.
    15. Giuseppe Attanasi & Pierpaolo Battigalli & Elena Manzoni, 2016. "Incomplete-Information Models of Guilt Aversion in the Trust Game," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(3), pages 648-667, March.
    16. Te Wu & Feng Fu & Long Wang, 2011. "Moving Away from Nasty Encounters Enhances Cooperation in Ecological Prisoner's Dilemma Game," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(11), pages 1-7, November.
    17. Stojkoski, Viktor & Karbevski, Marko & Utkovski, Zoran & Basnarkov, Lasko & Kocarev, Ljupco, 2021. "Evolution of cooperation in networked heterogeneous fluctuating environments," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 572(C).
    18. Zhang, Jianlei & Zhang, Chunyan & Chu, Tianguang, 2011. "The evolution of cooperation in spatial groups," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 131-136.
    19. Jacqueline Scholl & Nils Kolling & Natalie Nelissen & Michael Browning & Matthew F S Rushworth & Catherine J Harmer, 2017. "Beyond negative valence: 2-week administration of a serotonergic antidepressant enhances both reward and effort learning signals," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(2), pages 1-30, February.
    20. Kimbrough, E.O. & Vostroknutov, A., 2012. "Rules, rule-following and cooperation," Research Memorandum 053, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0153352. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.