Oxytocin reduces romantic rejection-induced pain in online speed-dating as revealed by decreased frontal-midline theta oscillations

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Oxytocin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Romantic rejection is an emotionally distressful experience profoundly affecting life, possibly leading to mental illness or suicide.

Here, the researchers tested the effect of OT on social pain and investigated its role in the outcome evaluation phase of social decision-making.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 61 participants were involved.

Electroencephalographic recordings were obtained between August 2nd and October 20th, 2020 in Shenzhen University from 61 healthy participants in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study with a between-subject design.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

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.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Oxytocin could be set against what happens without it.

The researchers defined frontal-midline theta oscillation as a neural signature of social pain and assessed self-reported pleasantness ratings for four possible romantic outcomes in an online speed-dating task.

What Was Measured

Here, the researchers tested the effect of OT on social pain and investigated its role in the outcome evaluation phase of social decision-making.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Brain, Courtship, Electroencephalography, Internet, Oxytocin, Pain and Rejection, Psychology.

Author keywords: Analgesic effect, Intranasal oxytocin, Social pain, Source localization and Theta oscillation.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 61 participants.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2021 (Psychoneuroendocrinology), a journal based in England.

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