Oxytocin hormone and bonding in women

I was listening to an interview the other day on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman about the Weinstein case and she talked to a woman who was discussing how some of the women that Weinstein raped actually continued communicating with him afterwards through emails and such.

So I read some more about oxytocin and found that in women it is released during sex and when they are in love, or have a child, it fosters bonding. While in men oxytocin can act in a way that they react more competitively. Men produce more dopamine during sex, which is a pleasure hormone.

Also vasopressin is released in emotional situations, good and bad, and that hormone relates to acting in a tribal manner, seeing others as part of your in-group or out-group.


Democracy Now interview about Harvey Weinstein trauma survivors

At 4:22

4th survival response of trauma survivors, flight, and fright and freeze, but also appease. Women produce oxytocin, tend and befriend hormone under toxic stress. A kind of Stockholm syndrome.



https://www.eligiblemagazine.com/2012/07/19/its-not-love-its-oxytocin/


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4941426/

Overall, the present findings support our hypothesis that OXT’s fundamental functional role in modulating social preferences and subsequent social interactions via the amygdala may have evolved to subserve different purposes in men and women. Our observations correspond to OXT enhancing the salience of positive social cues to facilitate “tend-and-befriend” and approach behavior in females toward individuals with prosocial attributes. This could help women to raise children more successfully by promoting formation of beneficial alliances within a social group and bonding with male partners who have good social and parenting qualities. For males, on the other hand, OXT may enhance the salience of negative social cues to help reduce antisocial influences by facilitating aggression toward or avoidance of (i.e., “fight or flight”) individuals in their environment with negative social attributes, and perhaps also by reducing partner conflict. For both sexes, OXT release would thereby serve the common purpose of helping foster an optimal social environment for successfully raising children.




https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130731093257.htm

When the researchers examined the differences between the sexes they discovered that following treatment with oxytocin, men's ability to correctly interpret competitive relationships improved, whereas in women it was the ability to correctly identify kinship that improved. Surprisingly, researchers discovered that the "love hormone" doesn't help women or men to better identify intimate situations. According to them, since the ability to correctly identify intimate situations was substantially low among all participants in the study, there is evidence to say that correctly identifying an intimate relationship between two people is intricate and complicated.



https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5743651/

At the core of positive social behaviors are neurobiological systems that regulate fear and threats versus safety. Oxytocin typically supports immobilization without fear, necessary in interactions with family and friendly associates. Vasopressin supports mobilization, and in some cases defensive aggression and protection of social boundaries.

A growing literature associates increased central vasopressin in the development of memory necessary for the avoidance of danger or survival