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Oxford University Press

Oxytocin enhances pupil dilation and sensitivity to ‘hidden’ emotional expressions

Overview of attention for article published in Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, May 2012
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (97th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (88th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
2 news outlets
blogs
2 blogs
twitter
34 X users
facebook
1 Facebook page
q&a
1 Q&A thread

Citations

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117 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
282 Mendeley
Title
Oxytocin enhances pupil dilation and sensitivity to ‘hidden’ emotional expressions
Published in
Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, May 2012
DOI 10.1093/scan/nss062
Pubmed ID
Authors

Siri Leknes, Johan Wessberg, Dan-Mikael Ellingsen, Olga Chelnokova, Håkan Olausson, Bruno Laeng

Abstract

Sensing others' emotions through subtle facial expressions is a highly important social skill. We investigated the effects of intranasal oxytocin treatment on the evaluation of explicit and 'hidden' emotional expressions and related the results to individual differences in sensitivity to others' subtle expressions of anger and happiness. Forty healthy volunteers participated in this double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study, which shows that a single dose of intranasal oxytocin (40 IU) enhanced or 'sharpened' evaluative processing of others' positive and negative facial expression for both explicit and hidden emotional information. Our results point to mechanisms that could underpin oxytocin's prosocial effects in humans. Importantly, individual differences in baseline emotional sensitivity predicted oxytocin's effects on the ability to sense differences between faces with hidden emotional information. Participants with low emotional sensitivity showed greater oxytocin-induced improvement. These participants also showed larger task-related pupil dilation, suggesting that they also allocated the most attentional resources to the task. Overall, oxytocin treatment enhanced stimulus-induced pupil dilation, consistent with oxytocin enhancement of attention towards socially relevant stimuli. Since pupil dilation can be associated with increased attractiveness and approach behaviour, this effect could also represent a mechanism by which oxytocin increases human affiliation.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 34 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 282 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United Kingdom 5 2%
United States 3 1%
Portugal 2 <1%
Netherlands 2 <1%
Turkey 1 <1%
Norway 1 <1%
Hungary 1 <1%
Israel 1 <1%
Germany 1 <1%
Other 2 <1%
Unknown 263 93%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 57 20%
Researcher 45 16%
Student > Master 34 12%
Student > Bachelor 34 12%
Professor > Associate Professor 17 6%
Other 56 20%
Unknown 39 14%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Psychology 129 46%
Neuroscience 24 9%
Medicine and Dentistry 21 7%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 14 5%
Engineering 10 4%
Other 35 12%
Unknown 49 17%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 57. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 22 February 2024.
All research outputs
#740,918
of 25,394,764 outputs
Outputs from Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience
#163
of 1,812 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#3,686
of 178,843 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience
#4
of 34 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,394,764 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 97th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,812 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 25.4. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 178,843 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 34 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its contemporaries.