is increasingly used to track the hormone’s release, and both positive social contact and stress are known to trigger it, which makes the two hard to separate. Choir singing lifts mood and creates social closeness, so it looks like the ideal test. The result went the other way.
Oxytocin fell after choir singing and did not move after singing alone. Happiness rose and sadness and fell after both. The authors read the drop as an effect of reduced stress and during choir singing inhibiting peripheral oxytocin secretion, rather than as social closeness releasing it.
Quantifying salivary oxytocin has emerged as a helpful tool for assessing peripheral secretion at baseline and after various challenges, in healthy and clinical populations. The trouble is that both positive social interactions and stress induce secretion, and the relative influence of either is not well delineated.
Choir singing looks like a clean way in. It is known to improve mood and to induce feelings of social closeness, so it should isolate the social side of the question.
The measurements were taken before, during and after both choir and solo singing, performed in by the same participants. Happiness increased, and sadness and salivary cortisol were reduced, after both kinds of singing.
Then the surprise. Salivary oxytocin concentrations were significantly reduced after choir singing and did not change after solo singing. The authors conclude that the social experience of choir singing does not induce peripheral oxytocin secretion, and that reduced stress and arousal may inhibit it, which is a warning for anyone designing a similar experiment.
wat. Singing together felt better and left less oxytocin in the saliva, not more.
wat wat
A hormone used as a proxy for social bonding turns out to move with arousal, which puts a question mark over a large literature.
How do we know?
Schladt and colleagues measured mood and salivary oxytocin and cortisol before, during and after both choir and solo singing, performed in randomized order by the same participants.
What is still unknown
Salivary oxytocin reflects peripheral secretion, which is not the same as what the hormone is doing in the brain.
Learn something?
Where to next
Does making something with your hands lower a stress hormone?cortisol
Why is it so hard to hear a speech inside an old abbey?singing
Does a hug from your partner before a stressful moment do anything measurable?cortisol