The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has been found to play an important role in a variety of social behaviours and social cognition in particular. The social salience hypothesis of OT suggests that OT shifts attention towards socially relevant stimuli, which offers an explanation for improvements on social cognition measures following OT administration. Pupil dilation occurs with increasing attentional resource allocation and previous research has found that OT administration led to an increase in pupil diameter in response to social stimuli relative to placebo (PL), thereby suggesting increased social attention. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of OT on pupillary responses to more naturalistic social stimuli in a larger sample. Ninety-four male participants took part in the double-blind, placebo controlled, mixed-design study, in which they self-administered either an OT or PL nasal spray before viewing naturalistic dynamic facial expressions of emotion (happy, sad, fear and anger). Contrary to prediction, there was no effect of OT administration on pupil diameter. The results are discussed in light of the social salience hypothesis and with reference to the methodological differences between studies.

已发现神经肽催产素（OT）在各种社会行为特别是社会认知中起着重要作用。OT的社会显着性假设表明，OT将注意力转移到与社会相关的刺激上，这为在OT管理后改善社会认知措施提供了解释。随着注意力资源分配的增加，瞳孔扩大发生，并且先前的研究发现，相对于安慰剂（PL），OT管理导致对社交刺激的瞳孔直径增加，从而提示了社会关注的增加。当前的研究旨在在更大的样本中研究OT对瞳孔对更自然主义的社会刺激的反应的影响。94名男性参与者参加了双盲，安慰剂对照，混合设计研究，在这种方法中，他们先服用OT或PL鼻喷雾剂，然后再查看情绪自然的动态面部表情（开心，悲伤，恐惧和愤怒）。与预测相反，OT对瞳孔直径没有影响。根据社会显着性假设并参考研究之间的方法差异来讨论结果。