Abstract
According to the social salience hypothesis, the neuropeptide oxytocin boosts attunement to both positive and negative social cues, such that the effects of oxytocin on social beliefs and behavior are highly dependent on context. Among underserved racial minorities, oxytocin might enhance sensitivity to racial injustice. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) rs53576 polymorphism affects individual differences in both perceived racial discrimination and beliefs about justice in an underserved racial minority. Healthy African Americans (n = 118) provided bloodspot samples that were assayed for the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs53576. Participants also completed individual differences measures of perceived racial discrimination and beliefs about justice for self and others. Consistent with the social salience hypothesis, individuals with greater potential oxytocin receptivity (G/G genotype) reported greater perceived discrimination than individuals with lower potential oxytocin receptivity (non-G/G genotype; p = .009). Also consistent, G/G individuals had stronger other-oriented beliefs about justice than non-GG individuals (p = .085). Path analysis supported that perceived discrimination mediated the connection from the G/G genotype to stronger other-oriented procedural justice beliefs, suggesting that justice beliefs among African Americans might partly reflect evaluations of discriminatory experiences that stem from oxytocin receptivity.
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Notes
All procedures performed in study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
We examined gender as a moderator of the effect of genotype in all hypothesis tests. Gender did not significantly moderate the effect of genotype on any of our outcomes (ps > .64) and including gender in the models did not substantially affect the results or change any conclusions.
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This research was supported by Award Number R21HL097191 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute awarded to the second author. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Heart, Lung, And Blood Institute or the National Institutes of Health. We thank Mercedes Hendrickson, Nathan Weidner, Lenwood Hayman, Edyta Debowska, Kaitlyn Simmonds, Kevin Wynne, Stefan Goetz, Rhiana Wegner, and the Clinical Research Center at Wayne State University for assistance with data collection. We also thank Jue Lin and the Blackburn Lab at the University of California San Francisco for biotechnical support with assays, and Eleanor Brindle and the Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology at the University of Washington for support with dried blood-spot collection.
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CED: conceptualization, formal analysis, writing—original draft, visualization. TL: conceptualization, investigation, methodology, writing—reviewing and editing, supervision, funding acquisition.
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Drolet, C.E., Lucas, T. The Neurogenetics of Racial Injustice: Oxytocin Receptor (OXTR) Gene rs53576 is ASSOCIATED with Perceived Discrimination and Other-Oriented Justice Beliefs in African Americans. Race Soc Probl 13, 102–109 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-020-09303-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-020-09303-2