Sniffing for obedience? Oxytocin Administration in Severe Psychopathology

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2021.105330

Commentary

Psychopathy, also known as a personality disorder associated with criminal behavior and violent recidivism, is a burden on society.

And social control is considered to be one of the features of psychopathology that may contribute to these problems.

Although these characteristics have been described, it appears that only a few studies have investigated these details.

Therefore, in this study we assessed the performance of 21 psychopathic patients and 24 normal controls on a gaze avoidance task.

The potential beneficial effects of the neuropeptides were assessed, and the results showed that the psychopaths were not more dominant in the gaze aversion task compared to the normal controls.

However, the severity of psychopathy was found to be positively correlated with reactivity dominance.

And, importantly, a single nasal dose of oxytocin abolished the relationship between psychopathology and reactivity dominance, a result that means that socially dominant psychopaths may benefit from oxytocin administration.