Intranasal oxytocin does not alter initial perceptions of facial trustworthiness in younger or older adults

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The researchers aimed to examine for the first time whether iOT influences perceptions of facial trustworthiness and eye-gaze patterns and, if so, whether age moderates these iOT effects.

Why It Was Studied

However, it is unclear whether iOT influences perceptions of whether a face is trustworthy.

In addition, no studies in this literature have investigated whether the participant's age may play a moderating role in the effects of iOT on trust.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, young adults, adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

One hundred and eighteen participants took part in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-groups study.

Participants made judgments about the perceived trustworthiness of a series of faces while their eye movements were monitored.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Oxytocin group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Oxytocin.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Oxytocin group a baseline to be compared against.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Age Factors, Facial Recognition, Fixation, Ocular, Judgment, Oxytocin and Trust.

Author keywords: Intranasal oxytocin, eye gaze, older age and trustworthiness.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2019 (Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England)), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Oxytocin compound page, all human trials.