@article{ref1,
title="Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism",
journal="Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America",
year="2011",
author="De Dreu, Carsten K. W. and Greer, Lindred L. and Van Kleef, Gerben A. and Shalvi, Shaul and Handgraaf, Michel J. J.",
volume="108",
number="4",
pages="1262-1266",
abstract="Human ethnocentrism-the tendency to view one's group as centrally important and superior to other groups-creates intergroup bias that fuels prejudice, xenophobia, and intergroup violence. Grounded in the idea that ethnocentrism also facilitates within-group trust, cooperation, and coordination, we conjecture that ethnocentrism may be modulated by brain oxytocin, a peptide shown to promote cooperation among in-group members. In double-blind, placebo-controlled designs, males self-administered oxytocin or placebo and privately performed computer-guided tasks to gauge different manifestations of ethnocentric in-group favoritism as well as out-group derogation. Experiments 1 and 2 used the Implicit Association Test to assess in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. Experiment 3 used the infrahumanization task to assess the extent to which humans ascribe secondary, uniquely human emotions to their in-group and to an out-group. Experiments 4 and 5 confronted participants with the option to save the life of a larger collective by sacrificing one individual, nominated as in-group or as out-group. Results show that oxytocin creates intergroup bias because oxytocin motivates in-group favoritism and, to a lesser extent, out-group derogation. These findings call into question the view of oxytocin as an indiscriminate &quot;love drug&quot; or &quot;cuddle chemical&quot; and suggest that oxytocin has a role in the emergence of intergroup conflict and violence.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0027-8424",
doi="10.1073/pnas.1015316108",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1015316108"
}